Couch to 5K: about half way

Since we found out we were having a baby, fitness kind of fell of the radar a bit. When the baby came a long and we were sleep deprived zombies, doing exercise wasn't an attractive prospect when compared to a few quiet hours of rest.

Fast-foward 4 years and things hadn't changed much. I'm less sleep-deprived but still no exercise. About six weeks ago, Lu decided she was going to start the NHS Couch to 5K (C25K) podcast and decided I was going to do it too (by way of getting our son to call me "Fat bum"). I wasn't reluctant but I wasn't overly excited either but I figured I'd give it a shot and see where it went.

I downloaded the first podcast and went out for the first bit of exercise in years.

The way C25K works is you start with 8 short runs with short walks between to rest. Gradually over the following weeks you build up to more running. Above is a graph of my first outing where you can clearly see the 8 peaks of running activity. This amounted to 8 minutes of actual run time.

I'm now roughly halfway. I did my first run of week 4 yesterday and the difference is already pretty clear.

There are still intervals of walking, but the ratio has now tipped towards longer runs and shorter intervals. This week amounts to 16 minutes of actual running so the difference there is already pretty drastic.

I can't yet quite believe I'll be anywhere near running a 5K in a matter of weeks but thinking back to my first run, I didn't think I'd make it this far so seeing the difference already is a massive booster.

Here's to the next few weeks!