Couch 2 Not Quite 5K

Almost two years ago, I ran my first 5K.  Just finishing was an accomplishment for me.  I am not a runner at all and it took 6 months of training to even get me to show up that cold, rainy December morning.  I had every intention of running another race, but it never happened.

This summer, I learned that a friend of mine was going to run in a 5K in October and I agreed to begin training and run with her.  I started back to using the "Couch 2 5K" training plan, which works very well for me.  It breaks the running schedule down by the week, gradually building up the lengths of time that you run so that by the end of the 12 week training period, you are running a 5K distance!

So, we started running in July.  What was I thinking?  In order for me not to overheat in this hot and humid southern weather, we would run when the sun went down- around 9pm.  Now, it was still hot and humid, but without the sun beating down, I could finish.  Each week I was able to build up my endurance.  Then we hosted Yana, a 23 year old lawyer from Ukraine, for 2 weeks and the training stopped.  We were just having too much fun spending time with her to get back out there each night and run.  We picked back up in August, but then soccer season started.  With practices and games, and adding in Wednesday night church, we just couldn't find the time to run more than once a week.  For natural runners like Rich and Matthew, that is not an issue.  For me, it's a 5K killer.

So, I had to back out on my commitment to run with my friend.  I was actually sad about that, which is a surprise to me since I really don't enjoy running.  But when you set out to do something that you don't think you can do, there is a bit of a letdown when you can't accomplish it.

There were evenings when I would finish a jog and actually would feel good.  There were other nights when I could barely finish.  There were also many times I easily talked myself out of running.  It did help to have my husband and my son run with me (they were well ahead of me, but they walked out of the house with me, so that's "with"!) some nights, as well as to have another friend hold me accountable on other days.

My new goal is to run a 5K in the spring.  I may need to backtrack a little in my training once the soccer season ends, but I think this is something I can accomplish.  I'll let you know how the training goes!