c25k mentioned in an interview on nerdfitness.com

emanp

I'm reading an interview (http://nerdfitness.com/blog/2011/09/15/how-to-not-suck-at-running/) on nerdfitness.com with the strengthrunning.com guy, and they talk about c25k. This is of interest to me (I'm paused in the middle of c25k due to a pulled calf, made it to week 4, day 2 and clearly didn't warm up enough that day).

He has a good critique of it: it can be boring! Personally, I keep it fresh by using it as my off-day cardio and taking different routes around the neighborhood. It doesn't bore me because it's hard. Also, I start wondering which houses will have good supplies and what good escape routes would be after the zombie Apocalypse, but maybe that's just me.

How about you?

His other point is that it ignores strength and flexibility training. Since my on-days (opposite of off days, right?) have my Action Hero Fitness training with lots of both, I've got that covered. What do you do?

kfbayard

I totally feel your pain with the calf injury...I pulled mine during week 3. It felt better after a week, so I started up again and a couple days later pulled it again. I then took a month off of no running. Instead I did what you mention at the end of your post...I focused on strength and flexibility especially in my legs. I did a lot of walking, yoga, and any strength exercises that didn't involve jumping. When I started up again I was able to jump right in where I'd left off, which made me happy. And I've kept up with the strength/flexibility routine too.

As for the boredom, for the workouts with intervals I brought my dog with me, because I loves his "walks" to be at around 4 1/2 - 5 mph with slower bits to sniff around. That kept things interesting. Once I got to the long runs (week 5 and on) I stopped bringing him and I'm totally bored with my route. I've been using mapmyrun.com to figure out alternates. I'm also doing an 8 person marathon relay in May (3.25 miles each), and my normal route overlaps some with that, so today I started trying out some of the actual relay route.

bexblonde

I run on the streets around my house, and I've started using Map My Run to map out some different routes so I don't get bored. I usually mix my routes up a bit so I'm not seeing the same scenery every run. The problem is that I live in a really hilly area so there aren't a huge amount of places I can run without major uphill climbs!

Strength-wise, I totally agree - I do my EA Sports Active 2 on my PS3 around 3 times a week in addition to the runs, I mostly focus on the squats, core exercises and weights. I'm planning to start doing Insanity 3 times a week instead of EA though (I know it's meant to be done every day but researched online & a lot of distance runners seem to use it in between runs as it apparently helps to increase endurance).