Yes Couch To 5K -Can I though?

Just Keep Putting One Foot in Front of the Other

Today is the final day.  It’s the 13^th of December, I am 42 years old and 9 weeks ago I could not run at all.

Last night I suddenly remembered why I’d started the NHS Couch to 5k programme.  Over the last year my love of a good fad has reached epic proportions.  I was gluten-free for a while.  I decided to be dairy-free for a little longer and I toyed with becoming vegan (ok, that was a quick toy).  I was looking for the miracle cure to be lean and healthy and generally gorgeous by selective privation alone.

A recent trip to the doctors reinforced everyone else’s view that my fad diets were a bad idea.  In something of a cliché I asked the nurse if there was any way her scales might be incorrect.  They weren’t.  A summer of happiness and complete indulgence with my lovely boyfriend had helped me to achieve an eye-watering weight that prompted me to buy new digital scales in the time it took to walk home from the doctors.  Which is a 30 second walk.

But that wasn’t it.  It was the cold.  October started and whilst other people may have put a light jumper on, I’d already got the big coat, hat, gloves and scarf out and endured the associated piss-taking from my work colleagues.  So I did what I do best and spent ages googling why some people feel the cold more than others.  The only consistent message seemed to be that people with low activity and high body fat feel the cold more than others.  It was another sucker-punch to the stomach.  It was reminiscent of my daughter and I googling (love a good google) why certain people float so much in swimming pools and others don’t as we sat by the swimming pool in Kos this summer.  It’s because they are have a higher fat content in their body.  This year we had a salt water swimming pool and I practically sat atop the waterline.

Pre-C25K I would categorise myself as someone who can’t run, doesn’t like it and just wants to stop as soon as they start.  I am not a runner.  I cannot run.  Memories of the dreaded school cross-country are seared across my soul.  Worse memories of running with my ex and being in pain every step of the way.  Memories of failure and foolishness.

Yet, without really thinking about it too much, I decided in a flash to download the app, print out Tom Benninger’s excellent progress chart (below), buy new trainers, charge my fitbit and just start.

Week 1

It’s Monday night.  My daughter is at an activity. As a single parent the biggest impediment to exercise is free time. I have an hour.  I’m going for it.

I start the warm up walk to the park.  I’m really conscious that I have a lot of bum on show in my running leggings, by virtue of there being a lot of bum there.  I have picked Laura to help me.  She has a kind voice and assures me I can do it if I follow the programme.  I have no expectations.  I probably can’t do it and I never finish anything.

The first run is hard.  60 seconds of running, 90 seconds of walking repeatedly several times.  I am struggling and have to repeat to myself “I can, I can, I can”.  I am not sure I can.  At one point I’m running with my thumbs up to persuade myself I can.  I probably can’t.

The following two runs (can we call them that yet?) give me a chance to run down to the nearby reservoir and country park, which is elating.  The running is less elating.  The chart on my fridge is completely daunting.  There is no way I can do it.

Week 2

Week 2 ups the runs to 90 seconds with 2 minutes walking in between.  Again I have my routine of running in town on Monday nights, by the reservoir on Wednesday and Friday night (seizing the opportunity of visiting family to get out).

It’s beautiful by the reservoir but very quiet and I’m having to coax myself into thinking that there aren’t many murderers around.  I feel really angry about this.  I’m angry that I have to think about it.  Recently on Twitter I saw the tweet from Danielle Muscato asking women what they would do if men had a 9pm curfew.  It incenses me that we always have to be careful.  It incenses me that men just wander about a city late at night and women can’t.  Lots of the responses were from men who couldn’t believe women have to think like this.  We do – all the time!  Part of me is running in the countryside to claim my right to the space, part of me is completely shit-scared.  It’s a theme that runs through this C25K journey, because in the third week the clocks change so I almost always run in the dark.

Week 2 is hard.  I am counting the 90 seconds in my head and hearing Laura’s voice telling me to slow down to a walk is always a huge relief.  But, even if I found it hard, I did it.

Week 3

The clocks have changed. I cannot run in the park anymore (see Danielle’s tweet) so I find a new route in town.  I have read other people’s blogs where people mention feeling self-conscious when running.  Somehow I don’t. I feel pretty good about it.  It does feel rather odd when it’s dark and drizzling and you’re that person who is out for a run on a Monday night.  I’ve often been that person, but never once about anything sporty.

On my first run of the week I end up running in places which are rather too isolated (albeit residential streets).  A van pulls up near me and leaves its engine running.  I’m a bit scared.

This week’s run is 90 seconds, walk, 3 minutes, walk repeated once.  3 minutes seems really long.  I am forced to admit to myself that 3 minutes is manageable, but that I just don’t want to find it hard.  I’m probably going to have to get over that.

Another week done.  More boxes on ticked off my chart.

Week 4

My hip is in agony, more specifically the top of the iliac crest.  This is a common running thing, although, as we know, I’m not a runner.  In September I did a ridiculous challenge at work where we walked 20 miles in north Wales as part of an orienteering challenge, the start of which involved a three-hour walk up a mountainside, known locally as The Beast of Llangollen.  It took me a couple of days to be able to walk properly.  It hurts.  Many ibuprofen and much voltarol applied but I am not giving up.

This week’s runs are 3 minutes, walk, 5 minutes, walk repeated once.  I feel so foolish saying that I cannot run 5 minutes, but I am not convinced I can.  On my Monday nights run I start to realise that I just have to keep putting on foot in front of the other, no matter what the speed.  One of the best things about C25K is that Laura frequently reminds you that you just need to keep going, it’s about distance and not speed.  And she tells me she knows I can do it.  Maybe I can.

Run 3 takes place in park as I bravely join aforementioned boyfriend as he does the Park Run. I do not join the Park Runners.  I take another route feeling a little silly and hoping he doesn’t see me.  I think the reason I don’t usually feel embarrassed when I run is because normally I’m running in the dark and can’t see the people in cars passing by. Today in the park there are a lot of people.  Proper runners, dog walkers, families on bikes.  And me, with a red face, struggling to run five minutes.  I also have a slight hangover from a couple of beers and a couple of glasses of wine.  This run is really hard, I struggle a lot, but I keep going.  One foot in front of the other until it’s done.  Himself comes back.  He is proud of me.  That means a lot.  I don’t feel foolish.

Week 5

I’m genuinely not convinced I can complete this week.

Firstly, the demands of Couch 2 5k go crazy this week:

Run 1: 5 minutes run, 3 minutes walk, 5 minutes run, 3 minutes walk, 5 minutes run

Run 2: 8 minutes run, 5 minutes walk, 8 minutes run

Run 3: 20 minutes run

Are they having a laugh? I spend a good while googling if anyone manages to complete this last run of to the week.  I don’t believe it for a second.  Apparently they do.  I’m really worrying about it and don’t know if I can face it.  This is the pinnacle of my crisis of confidence.  It’s genuinely making me feel sick.

Secondly, I really am in pain with my hip/pelvis to the point that walking hurts.  I’m so gutted and disappointed – I never complete anything and here I am thinking about giving up because it hurts so much and I’m walking with a significant limp.  Nonetheless, I rather recklessly put a lot of voltarol on the area, take paracetamol and put a hot pack on it and get into my running gear for my Monday night run.  I’m not sure if this is wise and people thinking I’m crazy having seen me limp across the playground trying to take my daughter to school, but I can’t give up now.

I manage the first run of the week.  The next day I go to the chiropractor who says my pelvis is completely out of alignment and that I have one leg slightly shorter than the other and a mild club foot.  Snort!  I’m scheduled to go twice a week for the foreseeable future, although they do give me an ice pack for my hip which is a revelation!  It’s like morphine for the bones.

I’m working from home for run 2 and head out late morning.  2 x 8 minutes.  As soon as I complete this, I walk back to the house in tears of relief and joy.  It’s a defining moment for me.  I actually can.  8 whole minutes!  Me!  Twice!

The beautiful sunny Saturday comes and I coerce my daughter into riding her bike with me down a country track while I do the dreaded 20 minute run.  She is not enthusiastic, albeit my pace doesn’t mean she’s breaking into much of a sweat.  I discover that running twenty minutes uses up a lot more road than I would have thought and I have to double back a couple of times.  I should have planned that better, but it seems amazing to me to cover so much ground so quickly (I stress, all things being relative).

I find listening to music such an enabler to keeping going.  I work on the basis that the average song is around 3 minutes so I try really hard to pace myself using songs. With ten minutes left to go I figure that’s roughly 3 more songs, which doesn’t seem so bad after all.  A good running soundtrack is really important, although when I started I was listening to music with a rhythm much faster than my fitness and it wore me out.

Somehow I achieve the impossible and run for twenty minutes without stopping.  I am elated and shocked!  I could not have believed it of myself.  I go home and put a huge ice pack on my hip.

 Week 6

Something amazing has happened; my bum has vanished!  I have been adding a 25 minute lunchtime walk round the block to my routine a couple of times a week and this has also helped with what I can only describe as a transformation.  It’s extremely noticeable that my bum is less.  I didn’t expect that to happen and it’s another fantastic upside of this journey.

I start reading Alexandra Hemingsley’s book ‘Running Like a Girl’ this week, recommended by a friend.  I try not to be aggravated that on her first run she managed to do 5k (this distance seems an impossibility to me), but I do take a lot of tips from her and think a lot what she says about telling yourself that you’re not a runner.  Who says?  Probably only you.  This is reinforced in the blog by my lovely friend, Louise (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-runner-looks-like-louise-dillon/).  I have clear evidence that I can run so why have a spent a lifetime telling myself I can’t?

Week 7

I am conscious this week that I just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.  I’m actually not really out of breath when I run and (aside from the badly aching hip / pelvis combo) it doesn’t actually hurt.  It’s about telling myself to keep going, whatever I am feeling.  And when I finish I get to punch the air with absolute joy.

This week I’m running 3 x 25 minutes and eating a lot of mince pies.  When I run I feel my lungs are stronger and take in more air.  I am doing it!  At this point in the programme, my brain is struggling to process how I can have gone from finding 60 seconds running really hard to running 25 minutes without stopping in seven weeks. I have read a lot of these blogs and couldn’t believe people could try to convince me that I could do it, but I can.  It’s incredible, really.

I weep for a few seconds after each of these runs as I’m a little overwhelmed that I have managed to complete them.

Week 8

We’ve now moved up to 28 minutes without stopping.  The last three minutes of the first run feels inexorably difficult.  I try to concentrate on losing myself in the music, which is something of an oxymoron.  I’m listening to the Massive Dance Classics playlist this week.  Who’s the dude?

The second run of the week is a Santa 5k fun run that I signed up to do with a couple of friends and our children a few weeks ago.  I’m kitted out in my santa outfit as is my daughter.  I am quite intrepid about whether it’s possible for me to complete this with the pressure of participating with people who can run a 5k.  I’m not a runner.  I’m not sure I can.  I’ve also persuaded my ten year old daughter to take part. She’s sure she doesn’t want to.

The run is not easy, but equally it’s not impossible. The gaggle of ten year olds with us mainly walk and then sprint when they see the mums coming, which is rather funny.  It’s my first time running with other people. I’m not sure whether I like or dislike it.  It feels odd for my solo pursuit to be communal, but it’s really nice getting cheered along the route with people shouting ‘YOU CAN DO IT!’  I agree, random stranger, I CAN!

Strangely, it’s only the last circuit round the running track that nearly kills me and I try to sprint (aka not run incredibly slowly) and feel a sense of achievement, but it is absolutely brutal. I did it though and I got my first ever sports medal.  Check me!

Week 9

Laura tells me that she knows I can do it, that I just need to keep running through the pain.  And that’s a lightbulb moment because it’s not actually always going to be easy.  Other people find this hard too.  That makes me happy.  I was worried that after the 5k run I’d convince myself that I’d actually achieved what needed to be achieved and give up, but my stubbornness has kicked in and I complete Saturdays and Monday’s week 9 runs.  By now, my calves start to feel really tight towards the end of the run and my pace is pretty slow.  I try to pick up from time to time, but really it’s just about getting through each session.

Today is my final day.  It’s a rare morning run and I head off down to the reservoir after dropping my daughter at school.  The grass is hard from the ice and I have to pull my hat down over my ears in the chilly breeze.  I set off down the hill and sometimes I do think about giving up, but I don’t seem to want to let myself.  It’s really cold, I’m tired and this is hard.  I lose myself in a song for a while and the moment passes.  I keep going.  I keep putting one foot in front of another.  Ten minutes in and I swear at Laura telling me I’ve got 20 minutes left to go.  I’m at a really exposed area by the reservoir and it’s bastard freezing!  5 minutes to go.  I can do this.  I pick up the pace.  She tells me it’s sixty seconds and I decide to ‘sprint’ the last bit (a waddling duck could probably overtake me). And then it’s done.  I throw my hands up in the air and shout out a giant “YESSSSSSS”, disrupting the peace as usual.  My face hurts from smiling.  I take selfies as evidence.  I’ve done something I could never have imagined: I completed the Couch to 5K!

When all is said and done…

…it really wasn’t that bad.  I was wildly sceptical about the C25K programme, because someone like me could never run 30 minutes without stopping, could never run 5 kilometres, but the programme is structured to help you achieve the unbelievable.  It’s worth it.  You just have to show up and keep putting one foot in front of the other.  And you get to eat loads of pasta without a shimmer of guilt, which is just about the most wonderful thing in the world.  My relationship with carbs has gone from hatred to necessity.  I need you, lovely carbs.

But equally the impact on my relationship with myself has been profound.  I’ve conquered a deep-rooted fear of my own limitations and I’ve achieved that by myself week after week on dark, rainy and icy evenings with only music and my lumo running jacket for company.  I didn’t do this for anyone but me and the only challenge has been from me to myself.  Instead of attempting to beat the system with fad diets, I was stronger than my own resistance to success.  I think this is a lesson to myself that I will take into other areas of my life.

The feelings of self-worth, the increase in my fitness and changes in my body are such fantastic payback for a couple of hours a week plodding on through the cold nights.  I would urge anyone to give this a try.  My next challenge is how to keep going now I’ve finished C25K (any tips welcome).

Circling back to the reason I started this programme, I feel that I do moan less about being cold, but I will let others around me judge that.  For today, the  most important thing is that I am declaring myself a runner.  I can.  That is all.

 

 

 

Jennifer

Peter! Oh, my beloved Peter!

When you were born I called you my Golden Boy, which of course made no sense because you had those dark, deep eyes and a tuft of chestnut hair which smelled of heaven.  You were part of me, grown from me, an attachment to me, which is why, my darling, sometimes I’m not quite sure how I should let you go.

Oh, how you’d smile with that infuriating mixture of scorn and affection – I wish you’d let that affection for me surface more, my dear sweet boy! – if you saw me now.  Every time I hear a car down the lane, I jump up!  It isn’t you and each time I catch myself leaping in this foolish way, I’ll admit that I am a little cross with you.  I cannot tell if waiting for you to arrive is worse that not seeing you every day, not hearing you thump down the stairs, asking what is for breakfast without so much as a good morning.  Peter dear, you know that the answer was always that you could have whatever you wanted.  Something, which as we both know only too well, would drive Stuart to distraction.  But quite honestly darling boy – and I’ll excuse my language – he can  bugger off!

I’m not sure how you are getting here as I didn’t think that you or Philippa had a car?  I would happily have come to the station, as would your father.  Of course, I know you must be driving, but which car?  Unless it’s a motorbike.  Oh dear God.  Maybe Philippa has a motorbike?  She had those frightfully heavy ‘biker’ boots on last time.

She certainly seems to love you, Peter.  I do feel rather concerned for your airways on occasion, what with you having another human attached to you in that way.  I wonder if she feels that you have lacked affection in your life?  I do not know where she could have gained that feeling and I do wish I could ask you to tell her.  We have always been very free with affection in this household.  It’s part of who we are.  And yet she cossets you like a newborn man-baby! Always touching, always pressed into you like she wants to stop you being afraid of the dark, which you never were!

I do not think I can recall looking at another person the way that Philippa looks at you.  The memory of the magic of falling in love is like a long-forgotten summer.  Is it love or is it indecent?  Is it meant to preclude, to territorialise you or is she so lacking in awareness that she does not give a jot for how I might be feeling?  Your patient kind eyes looking straight ahead as she nuzzles repeatedly into your neck!  Peter darling, it makes me quite nauseous!  Aunty Joan said the same!  Your father said you were lucky and I’m being neurotic, which wasn’t terribly helpful, but not at all unexpected.

And Peter, what kind of 30 year old woman has hair down to her elbows?  Swishing it about like a calling card!

I need another cup of tea.  I really ought to stop talking to you like this.  Daddy is out – I am surmising that he does not wish to see me pacing the kitchen flags in anticipation of your return.  Oh, the bittersweet joy that fills me up!  Never could I have imagined these days that are upon us now.  You running through the house leaving toy cars and lego and sweaters abandoned in your wake! Always running back to Mummy, always me at the centre.

All in all we cannot say that your last visit was unsuccessful.  I am so happy you are returning home again so soon!  I wonder if this will be the routine now, that you will bring Philippa when you visit Daddy and me. She is not without her positive qualities, of course.  Her fabulous cooking and her humanitarian political views and her face has a degree of uniqueness (though she could make it a little more appealing with a touch less of the dark make up around her eyes).  I want so to like her!  I want so to be happy that she is the  best you can possibly do for yourself, but I am so worried that she might just swallow you up whole and leave nothing for the rest of us.

You’re 45 minutes late and Daddy has just returned from whichever mysterious errand he has concocted for himself.  I really do dread to think and so I prefer not to.

I bought a lovely leg of lamb for our dinner this evening.  I had the dreadful feeling that Philippa doesn’t eat red meat though.  I can rustle something up, if necessary.  Although now I think, when you were here last, you and Daddy went and got a curry and I’m sure that had lamb in it.

You probably didn’t notice or were too polite to say, but she rolled her eyes at me when you went to get the curry. I said “Yes, you go with Daddy”.  Perhaps you’re used to the gesture, but she definitely rolled her eyes when I said Daddy.  After you had shut the door behind you both I put her right: “Oh things are very traditional in this house. Peter has always called his father ‘Daddy’.”  Traditional in our family means Stuart disappearing to the blessed golf course for an inexorable amount of time most weekends and returning in a mood that is as dismissive as it is foul for the main part. But I did not tell her that.

“Jenny, your flower arrangement is so beautiful. Are the flowers from your garden?” she said with the bounding enthusiasm of a misguided puppy.  Jenny! JENNY!

“Oh yes, dear.  You’re really too kind.  I grow flowers whenever the season permits, which is rather seldom unfortunately…  But all my closest friends say to me ‘Jennifer, you really do have the greenest of fingers in the whole village’ which is why I tend to the flowers in the church”.

I could not help it Peter!  I felt guilty instantly and to recall that moment is to colour up with shame.  Of course, you told her to call me Jenny and really what else could the poor girl have called me?  But after watching her repeatedly fondle you to the point of borderline indecency I am afraid I could not cope with one single more moment of intimacy from that girl.  It was beyond my capabilities and I am sorry.  I am sorry, Peter.  Forgive your mummy, because I am sure she told you about it.  Or maybe she didn’t, but she did not address me by my name again that visit, which must have caused her some pain and anxiety.  I will correct myself for you.  I will tell her to call me Jenny and ask if I may call her Pippa.

Peter and Pippa!  You sound like characters from a child’s early reader!

Daddy says I shouldn’t text you as you’ll be driving anyway.  Please come soon.

Aunty Joan agrees that it would not be entirely unacceptable for me to discuss the animalistic nuzzling noises with you.  I will see how much my patience can bear.  But surely you can understand that her swatting your face with her hand in a paw-like gesture, then making almost imperceptible animal noises as she kisses your neck is rather distracting while watching Strictly Come Dancing?  I didn’t know where to put myself. And she did it again at breakfast!  When you were both still in your pyjamas!  It’s really too much.

But I am happy for you, my darling and I will try to be patient and kind and to embrace your choices, because when she is long gone, I will still be here. Always.

Ha!  Look!  You’ve arrived in whatever contraption made your father dash outside like a mad thing.  A two-seater soft-top of all the things.  She’s holding your hand already.  Does she think you will run away?

Give me one minute, my Golden Boy.  A tear has escaped my right eye.  I must wipe it away and calm myself for a moment.  Then I will come outside and hug you.  And try to embrace all of the joy that you are here.