Inauspicious Beginnings, and the Couch to 5K Programme

Hey all, and welcome to the first post on my little personal fitness blog! My name's Matt, and I've recently taken an interest in my body. Not in a dirty way or anything, honest! I've had it for twenty-something years now, and I've only just realised that it's there. And boy, it's pretty lanky and out of shape!

So I've decided to do something about it. I'm a month and a half in to the NHS Couch to 5K programme, and I've gotta say, it has definitely made me a better runner! In another couple of weeks, I will have finished the programme, and will continue to jog three times a week. So, why not open up with a review?

The Couch to 5K Programme

The Couch to 5K Programme (C25K) was developed by the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. The design choices are made explicit in the name: It has been designed for complete novices, pre-novices even, to running. If you've ever done any sort of running training before, you're probably already too good for the programme, or at least good enough to start several weeks in to it. That said, my only exposure to exercise up to starting the programme were some pretty intense Dance Dance Revolution sessions, so I was squarely in the pre-novice category!

C25K is broken down in to nine weeks, with each week containing three running sessions. It's recommended you leave a gap of at least one day between sessions. Each session starts with a five minute brisk walk. The programme starts off fairly easy, the first week is composed of 8 repetitions of one minute running and ninety seconds walking, for a total of 20 minutes. I didn't find this particularly challenging, but I wasn't about to start jumping ahead in the programme! In the following weeks, the rest periods get shorter, and the total time running increases.

At the halfway mark in the programme, the total time is 21 minutes, but you only have two 3 minute rest breaks. By the end of the following week, you have no more rest breaks, and are running for 25 minutes straight. The remaining two weeks of the programme build your stamina, with the final week being three 30 minute long running sessions. Not bad for someone who two months prior was sat on their bum watching television, right?

I imagine many people look at the programme and think "Why do you only gain about a minute of total session time in all of five weeks?" The truth is, over those five weeks you go from running less than half the time (walking filling the rest), to running whole session. It's a necessary barrier to break: You need to be able to run for some length of time without a break before you can work towards that 30 minute / 5 kilometre goal. Of course, even across those five weeks, if you're tracking distance ran (or total distance ran and walked), you'll see gains! So if you're worried about the numbers, don't sweat it. Start at week one, work through it.

My Experience

So, I embarked on my epic journey. I say 'journey', I'm lucky enough to be in possession of the family treadmill (This should hopefully show that I don't come from a family of slobs, just I am the black sheep), so I don't go very far when I go running. And given where I live, it's probably a good thing that I don't go outside!

As I wasn't going outside, I didn't need to invest in things like interval timers, or music players: I could just move my laptop to my treadmill and program my own run timer, and use Spotify to build my running play-list. So step one was to write a little script in Python (I'm a computer programmer, by the way!) that would shout commands at me when I had to walk and when I had to run, and program the C25K schedule in to it. I fine-tuned it over the course of the programme to do useful little things, like actually say 'Walk!' and 'Run!' and 'Stop!'.

I experimented with various music, finally putting together a great Spotify play-list (parental advisory, it's got some Kanye West!) in Week 7. Turns out, good music can help you run better! Or at least, it helped me. I've got my warm-up track (Wing-stock by Ashley MacIsaac),  followed by seven songs that inspire me to keep going and push forward every time I hear them. They're not traditional running tracks (supposing you subscribe to the 'Now! That's What I Call Running' school of play-list design), but they work for me. Of course, it's a very personal choice, and I find that being inspired keeps me productive and on-task. And hey, I can sing along between breaths!

I set-up the treadmill next to a table, on which I could put my bottle of water (vital!) and laptop. I'd hit play on the run timer, start the play-list and begin the five minute walk.

As I said earlier, my experience with the first week of the programme was a little dismissive. Run sixty seconds, walk ninety, repeat eight times. It was easy, and gave me plenty of time to work out the kinks in my lil' run timer program and start to perfect the play-list.

The second week was a little bit harder, but still fairly unchallenging. It seemed as though my university years spent playing DDR did pay off slightly! The third week however, was a wake-up call. The overall time spent on the session is reduced, but for the first time in the programme I was running longer than I was walking. I had no idea how much of an effect this would have on my runs!

Initially, it was devastating. I was having real trouble finishing until the start of week five. Sure, it was still difficult, but I could deal with it better, as though my lungs had woken up and realised it had to be at maximum efficiency during these short breaks. However, this obviously didn't help for the end of week five, which was a straight twenty-one minute run. If there was a real wake-up call, it was the end of week five. By the end of it, I was feeling completely drained, like my heart was going to burst out my chest, and my feet were killing me and my legs would never talk to me again.

I didn't let that stop me though: I saw the beginning of week six, it was back to the good old 'run, walk' cycle that I initially wasn't fond of, but now had grown to love. And I powered through the week, even the last session, a twenty-five minute run! Again, it almost killed me, but it actually felt better than the twenty-one minute run, so I must have been making progress, right? It definitely felt like that, so I kept going.

No more walking, it's all running from week seven onwards. I've just finished week seven, including its very challenging twenty-eight minute run. And you know what? At the end of it, I felt I could have kept going for the thirty. But I'm on the plan, and I'm going to follow it. I'll get comfortable with twenty-eight through week eight, and I'll storm week nine and finish the programme laughing!

So yeah, if you ask me what I think of the programme, I'd have to give it an enthusiastic two thumbs up! It's increased my stamina immensely, as evidenced by the fact I can now blow through fairly difficult DDR songs like they're nothing, and not be gasping for air by the end of them like I used to. It feels good to run, and it's something I'll continue doing long after the programme is over. My curiosity for all things fitness has been piqued, and I'm going to start working on different parts of my body very, very soon. To wrap up, I'd have to say "Thanks, NHS, for introducing me to such a pleasant and fulfilling activity, and making it easy for me to get in to!"