Couch to 5K Programs - Your Experience

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  • Carfoodel
    Carfoodel Posts: 481 Member
    I have never been a runner & I am an ex-smoker and stopped when I got atypical pneumonia and my lung capacity has been poor since that - even though that was a long time ago. I am ok with my weedy lungs as long as I am consistent and all my exercise has had to be built up slowly and it drops quickly if I fall off from the gym.

    I am on my 2nd attempt of the c25k - I tried a couple of months ago and got up to week 8 - but I kept on having to drop the speed. My knees give me problems so I had to stop as I could hardly walk after the sessions. I worked on other machines to build up my capacity so I could do 30 min interval training on the cycle machine and elliptical.

    I have just started back to it now and am about to go into week 4. The previous time I was running at 6.5k with a rare push to 7k - and this time I am able to do the jogging bits at 8.5/9 and sometimes 10kpm so building up on other machines has allowed my knees to get stronger without losing the lung capacity I have built up.
  • czmmom
    czmmom Posts: 236 Member
    I finished c25k about 18 months ago and tomorrow I am running my first half marathon. It worked well for me!!
  • Ntoriousydc
    Ntoriousydc Posts: 31 Member
    I'm not a smoker but I started the C25K programme at 235lbs and ran my first ever race - a 5K two weeks ago in a personal best of 35 minutes. In all honesty I never actually completed the C25K as by week 6 I was already running for 30 minutes (in preparation for my scheduled 5k race), so I worked off my own programme after that.

    However I'll always be grateful to C25K for turning me into a runner, I found it incredibly difficult to even run for 90 seconds the first week and now I'm regularly running 3 days a week, and have increased my distance to 4 miles (working on training for a 10K). I'm now 30lbs lighter than when I started, which makes it a little easier though. To get started running, personally I can't recommend C25K enough, never did I feel like there was too big a jump in the weekly runs and it gave me a schedule to keep to, which was great motivation, as I knew 'oh this is the week 4 day two run today' and that spurred me on.

    Three months ago I couldn't run if i was being chased by an axe murderer, after C25K, I'm pretty confident that I'd out run him ;-)

    was the 30lb loss entirely due to running (plus a healthy balanced diet/calorie limit?
  • RunWinterGarden
    RunWinterGarden Posts: 428 Member
    Not a smoker, but I'm currently on week 6 of the program. I'm repeating one of the days over and over again right now because I don't really like how quickly it jumps in to the long runs (plus my social schedule has made it hard to run consistently enough these last two weekends to plow through). Currently I'm at the point where I do a 10 minute run with a 3 minute walk and a 10 minute run. My next day is a 22 minute run and I plan on conquering that next week. I don't like how it goes from intervals to long stretches of running as quickly as it does and I doubt that I'll use the Couch to 10k program after this to help with my half marathon training, but we will see how I feel in a week or two!

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