I’m glad I’ve noticed this: it’s the first few minutes that are often hardest, not the last few. Today I barely had the energy to get started dragging my lardy frame through the motions.
I think it’s a question of momentum. Intellectual and emotional momentum. The same effect that means you can procrastinate for three hours over tidying your kitchen, but as soon as you run that first bowlful of washing up water, it turns out the whole job’s easy and it only takes a half hour.
Once I’d put one foot in front of the other for a few minutes today, I pretty much got over that “activation energy” hump and kept running.
This being the first run of week five, it was three five-minute runs. I’m still doing the same route out and under the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and I’m now comfortably past the bridge before Get Running tells me to turn around at the halfway point. It’s good to have a nice majestic marker to measure yourself against!
Today I was nicely warmed up by the halfway point, and turned around and ran my last half easily enough. I’m still not going very fast — I’m overtaken by men, women, and the occasional Chihuahua1 — but I slogged away and wasn’t feeling any big problems by the end of the run.
So, I think this whole C25K thing is working just fine. Week five looks a bit intimidating at first — the run after next is twenty whole minutes with no rest breaks — but I’m feeling like it’s doable.
I’m not sure I’ll get to run to the schedule this week, as I’ll be away for a wedding, but there should only be a day’s delay, at most. And as I don’t drink, there shouldn’t be too much organic damage inflicted by the wedding to cause me any gyp!
1Only joking. But only just.
Completely agree. Some things look terribly intimidating before you start them and then once you actually start they’re actually fairly straightforward and you get a nice sense of accomplishment out of it. I wish I was doing with exercise instead of my accounts, but hey, they’re still done.
I’m with you on that starting thing too, dude. I actually found that the last five minutes were the best this morning, although I did put on some music just for them. I really don’t think I’m going to manage the third run! But maybe I just need to slow down more than I’m running at the moment.
Really glad you got through it, and glad again of your continuing passive encouragement to keep up with you 🙂
Hey — did you twitter with your achievement? Don’t forget to hash tag to #c25k too!