Couch 2 5k

Couch 2 5k is a popular fitness program I first ran across a couple of years ago, when a friend of mine tried (and successfully completed) it. The idea is simple: You live a sedentary lifestyle? In nine weeks, this program will get you running a 5k, or about 3.2 miles. You workout for about 30 minutes, 3 times a week, either on a treadmill or outside.

I don’t own a treadmill, and the weather has been unseasonably warm, so I’ve been going outside. If Santa brings me a treadmill for Christmas, I can keep this up during the real winter months, and also during the summer, when it gets too hot to go outside. (I’m a heat wimp. I’d rather run in the snow.)

Week one is only tough is you’re really a couch potato. All you do is run a series of nine, sixty-second intervals with ninety-second walks in between. Don’t want to look at a watch? No problem! Check out Podrunner Intervals for some nice interval mixes with chimes to cue you. They have mixes for all nine weeks, plus a graduation mix.

So, how’s it going? Well, I finished week 4 yesterday, and am supposedly ready to move on to week 5, although the program is accelerating so rapidly at this point that I’m not sure I can keep up. Week 4 had me doing 2 3-minute runs and 2 5-minute runs, at the end of which my lungs tried desperately to heave themselves out of my chest through my esophagus.

Weeks 5 and 6 have different interval schedules each day, but to make a long story short, at the end of this week, the program wants me running for 20 minutes straight. Week 6 actually backs off a bit on days 1 and 2, then pushes ahead to a 25-minute run, which continues into week 7.

I think this is when a lot of people give up. It’s hard, and as much as I respect the program, I think that for some of us, the transition is a bit much. I’m going to spend the next week doing day 1 of week 5, then move on to day 2 of week 5, then maybe play around with week 6. I haven’t made up my mind exactly. What I really intend to do is listen to my body. If I’m still trying to eject my lungs after running for 15 minutes, I just can’t honestly believe I’m ready to run longer than that.

Three’s a 5k race the last weekend in January, so that’s my goal.