Couch To… Somewhere…?
Two weeks ago I did something I’ve never done before. I voluntarily, for pleasure and exercise, went for a (kind of) run. I started Couch To 5K.
It must be 35 or more years since I last ran for exercise and back then it would have been teenage me reluctantly in a PE lesson at school. Since then I might have broken out into a bit of a run to catch a bus or train, probably to retrieve a wayward toddler as she made a bid for freedom under the lax supervision of her father. Most recently it was 30 seconds on a treadmill when I was buying my running shoes.
School: An Education… In Hating Exercise
At school I was not a sporty person. I wasn’t good at sports and I don’t remember ever being given help or encouragement to improve. The pupils who were good at sports were encouraged whilst people like me were seen as the no-hopers; we were the ones who were always picked last for teams. It was a weird mix of humiliation and discouragement. I’m not entirely surprised that I’ve never seen exercise in a positive way or that it has taken me decades to start to embrace it. I really hope that PE and sports in schools is very different these days but I suspect it might not be.
35 Years Later
Without repeating things I’ve said in previous posts about the journey I’ve recently started, one of the things I’ve had a strong urge to do since I started is completing a Parkrun. It might end up being a one-off thing or it might be the first of a more a regular activity. I might run half-marathons or full marathons or ultra-marathons. Who knows? But I have an initial goal to run 5K and it’s become a bit of a weird obsession.
Couch To 5K
Couch to 5K is a way to go from not running to being able to run 5 kilometres or at least run for 30 minutes non-stop. The plan and routines gradually evolve, over nine weeks, from walking with a bit of running to running with a bit of walking to just running.
There are all sorts of plans you can follow and slightly different approaches but I, like probably a lot of people in the UK, am following the one created by the NHS. There is a good smartphone app you can use which talks you through the sessions and they also provide a useful PDF document which kind of defines the plan. This should be very handy, but more on that later.
All The Gear, Some Idea
As well as my running shoes (and I really recommend going to get proper running shoes and not just using any old pair of trainers, particularly if you are older, heavier or liable to suffer an injury) I’ve got some tracksuit bottoms, long-sleeved running tops, a lightweight fleece (this is an old work one so no link I’m afraid), a running belt for keys, phone, etc., my iPhone and some bone conducting headphones.
In addition, I’m using my Garmin Fenix 7 to manage the sessions. This is where the PDF plan would have been useful because the information it provides should allow me to create workout plans in the Garmin Connect app (I found this video useful) which I can then sync with my phone. I then start the workout session on my watch and on the Couch to 5K app.
The reason for this is that the Couch to 5K app is great for encouragement and talking you through the sessions but I can see myself needing that less and less. But more importantly for me, it doesn’t provide any tracking about your runs and I love this sort of data. By doing the workout on my Garmin I can collect a lot of data to review and I can also sync it with Strava to help build up an overall view of my exercise (and because Zwift can also sync data with Strava it becomes a single place to review everything).
But, and it is a big but, the PDF version of the plan is not the same as the session plans in the app. So for the first session in week two I was out of sync before I even got going. So now I look at the sessions in the app and create my Garmin workout plans from those.
The Mental Steps
As someone who is new to exercise and who is very self-aware about their lack of fitness and ability, just stepping out of my front door to go and do the first session was intimidating. What if people laugh at me? What if I can’t do any of it and give up after a few minutes? What if I can’t run at all? What happens if I see someone I know? The doubts go on and on. But I had picked a day, the 31st of March, and I was determined to stick to it. Worse case, I could pretend that I was out for a walk in some slightly unusual clothing for me.
So at around 6pm I walked up to the recreation field in the village where I live. The warm-up is a walk so this was fine. And the field was largely empty apart from a few young children playing and a joyous sight… someone doing some intermittent walking and running which was very possibly someone else doing Couch to 5K. Suddenly it all felt a bit more possible. But even without that I was remembering the words that “doing something is better than doing nothing” and I was indeed doing something and I felt empowered by it.
In the four sessions I have done since then I have had two where the field was essentially empty, one where some ladies walking their dogs asked me what I was doing (it’s incredibly hard to politely reply whilst still walking briskly), and one where the field was part-filled with a kids football club and, inevitably, their parents all watching. But I walked and ran regardless and nobody shouted anything at me and after a little while I zoned them all out and just got on with what I was doing. I survived and it didn’t put me off doing it all again. In fact, this week I was a bit sad that I’d done my run a little earlier and missed my, presumably appreciative, audience.
The Physical Steps
The first run was physically painful. During the run (and for a day or two after) my lower back hurt. Running on a recreation field seemed like a good idea but rough ground causes the occasional misstep and painful jarring movement. I will switch to tarmac soon but I’m still happier doing laps of the field. I’ve not encountered the pain in the same way since that first run so I guess my body is adapting.
But the running itself was fine. I manage all of the 60 second running segments and at the end of it all, despite being out of breath, I felt exhilarated. And that pattern has continued. In week two you start running for 90 second segments and next week I’ll be up to 3 minute ones. And I’m looking forward to it.
The worst thing so far was that the muscles down the top half of the front of my legs were incredibly painful the evening after that first run. They were still bad the next day (walking around was not a huge amount of fun) and after two days I was seriously considering delaying the next run in case I had done, or would do, some damage to myself. However I did go and run and the pain not only eased during it but it was a lot better than evening and almost completely gone by the next morning.
I do have in the back of my mind that I’m not in a race and that the idea is not to run quickly and since you control your own pace it should always be manageable. Hard, tiring and, literally, breathtaking, but always something manageable. It seems to be as much of a mental thing as a physical thing.
I do need to be careful that the Garmin tracking doesn’t start to push me too far because, as you finish each running segment, it tells you the pace you ran at and it is really easy to start pushing yourself harder to increase your rate in the next segment. But having that data is really encouraging and you can see some trends happening as you get a bit faster across sessions.
The Future
Tomorrow I run the third session of week two and whilst it is still very early on in the plan I am enjoying it and I feel a huge sense of achievement with what I have done already. I fully intend to complete it and then run a Parkrun so I will post an update in a couple of months. But for now I just wanted to document how it all started because, by the end, I doubt I would remember the muscle pains, the mental roadblocks and the early sense of achievement.