Alright, it’s been a few days since I updated everyone on my Couch to 5K training progress… Saturday I wrapped up “Week 4″ (even though it was my second week of doing this), and I tell ya, it was a workout. Despite what I said last week, I did the Week 3 cycle just the once, and did Week 4 all of last week.
Week 4 is the first week where you do more running than walking (not counting the standard 5min warm up and cool down walking). There was 3min running, 90sec walking, 5min running, 2.5min walking – then repeat that whole thing. That made for 16min total running, and the first couple days… that second 5min was tough.
I was at the gym, so I can count laps as I go, and the first 5min set I was doing just over 7 laps. On Monday and Wednesday when I got to the second 5min stretch I was barely doing 6 laps. So yea, I was getting tired. But… for some reason on Saturday it was reversed. The first 5min set I did bout 6.5 laps and I did just over 7 the second set. The pod cast I use may have something to do with it as the music used in the second set has a faster tempo than the first.
Now today, I’m going to try Week 5 – now I’m not sure how the podcast is going to handle this, but the Week 5 really changes things up – it’s a different cycle each day of the week. Day 1 is run 5min, walk 3 and you repeat this 3 times. Day 2 is supposed to be 8min run, 5 walk, then another 8min run and Day 3 is 20min of running. This could be interesting. And I’m planning something different today too. Assuming it’s not raining (which is kinda iffy around here lately) I’m going to go home after work, bike to Lake Phalen and do my training there. The walking path around the lake is right about 3 miles… and it’s about a 4 mile ride there. So I’ll get a nice workout today.
Now, as far as the begging thing…
One of the reasons I’m doing all this is to be better prepared for my running the Warrior Dash. And as part of that I’ve got the whole Dash From Obesity fund raiser going on… where I have LOADS of great prizes up for grabs. All you need to do is make a minimum of a $10 donation to one of three great organizations that deal with obesity issues, send me a copy of your receipt, and bam! you’re entered in the drawing.
Unfortunately – I’ve gotten a very under-whelming response to all this so far. I’ve got like $1500 in prizes and with just about 4 weeks left in this I have less than $300 in donations. I know times are tough… I know there’s been a ton of people hitting the WLS people up for donations lately. That’s why I wanted to have the whole prize thing, that’s why I’ve tried combining my efforts with some of the other things going on.
I dunno… maybe people are just tapped out right now?
If that’s case… I do understand. Trust me, I do. And that’s fine. But, if you’ve just been putting it off… do me a favor and think about hitting this hard in the next week or so? It would be some nice additional motivation for me to know that this is helping out just a little. And if I have to beg, I suppose I will. But I’ll give things another couple weeks, thanks.
Rob how do I donate?
Check the Make a Donation link under the Dash From Obesity menu at the top of the page… that will link you to the the donation pages for the three organizations I’m helping out here. And Thanks! :>
WD is for sissies… come to Texas to do the Tough Mudder in October!
Honestly, I think it would be cool to get a bunch of WLS’ers together to run one of these (most likely a WD since its a 5K and we have varying levels of fitness…)
If I could afford the travel, I would love to Travis… it will likely be just as warm in your October as it’ll be here for me in July… and I am looking at a Mud Run (basically a 10K event for MS) up this way in September… a friend of mine is one of the main sponsors and if they put together a team I may see about being on it.