C25K Question For Guys

ukhennin

I read all the time about how you can repeat weeks in C25K and not worry about it. I'm curious how many guys here actually do repeat a week. I'm just thinking that goes against our male egos. So guys, anyone actually do C25K and have to repeat weeks? Are you happy you did or do you wish you just pushed through?

Angela4Health

I'm not a guy but my ego is every bit as big as a guy's ego is! LOL If you struggled with a week, you really should do it again until you're comfortable moving on. If you push yourself to move forward before you're ready, you might not want to do it at all anymore. Trust me, I know that's HARD to do, but it's O-K!

thumper44

I've repeated days. It helps build up the stamina for the next week.
ex, when I had trouble keeping the 5 min jog, I repeated it. The next week I was able to pass it, and continue on.

I never worried about it. I'm happy I did it.
If you can't learn to control your pace or breathing for 3 min or 5 min jog.
How will you do for the 20 min jog.

Mindful_Trent

The way I see it, it has nothing to do (or should have nothing to do) with ego. When doing athletic training of any sort, there's a learning curve where you are conditioning/training your body. Not everyone's body learns at the same rate and it's the responsible thing to do to repeat weeks when you feel your body hasn't fully caught on to that week's lesson. If you don't go at the pace that's right for your body, you'll end up hurting yourself or hitting a wall that causes you to give up altogether.

ukhennin

Good advice guys (and gal).

UpToAnyCool

I'm not a guy, but am totally nosy and usually try to look at all the C25K threads -
thought this was going to be a bloody nipples question :embarassed: - glad no one's nipples are bleeding. :laugh:

You might be doing the program w/ friends or something, but if not, aren't you the only one that would know if you repeated a week? If you don't need to repeat any weeks, then great - but if you do, honestly, does it bother you that much?

In my opinion, the C25K program is helpful because it is a way to get into running with safe increases in duration and speed of running. Since running injuries are so very likely and common, I kind of look at it less from a point of view of How Fast Am I? How Far Can I Run? and rather more of a How Can I Keep Running Injury-Free kind of thing. Maybe I am just a slacker.

That said, if you google the NOVA documentary [Marathon Challenge] about how they train normal (even sedentary) people for a Marathon, you will see that injuries are sooooo rampant that staying injury-free is harder to do than one would think.
The documentary explains that your body's respiratory and cardiovascular systems improve much more quickly than your muscular and skeletal systems do.

:flowerforyou: Good luck! People like me, Back-of-the-Pack joggers, will always make people like you feel better because you'll never be dead last!! :bigsmile:

UpToAnyCool

(sorry - double post)

iplayoutside19

If you have bloody nipples during C25K....you are "really" doing it wrong.

I didn't repeat any weeks. However, I have had plenty of set backs with longer distances. Which is madening.

However, injury atricion in running is very high. Sometimes the goal is to get to the race without being injured. Which I failed to do once.

Listen to your body, repeat as necassary. You're really only competing against yourself.