Complete the Couch to 5K program

“On the Wednesday before the race, I completed the last training run of the Couch to 5K program. It was a "free run," meaning you run as far as you want for as long as you want. I decided to treat it like a dress rehearsal for my 5K. I plotted out a three-mile loop and off I went. My plan was to take it easy and walk whenever I wanted to, for as long as I wanted to. I figured this way I couldn't help beating that time when I ran the actual race on Saturday, since I planned to push myself as hard as I could that day. The path was mostly deserted. I huffed and puffed and walked and jogged, enjoying the run and the fact that I wasn't under any pressure to go particularly fast. I just wanted to complete the distance. When I got back to the pedestrian bridge, near where my car was parked, and pressed the button to end the timer on my run, I learned I had run 3.3 miles in 43 minutes—even longer than the standard 5K distance. I was thrilled. Beyond thrilled. [...] I did the full distance, I took it easy on myself and I still made it in less than 45 minutes. I started to wonder if maybe I'd be able to run Saturday's 5K in less than 40 minutes.”

“Back when I started the Couch to 5K app, I saw how fast the progress was meant to be and thought: “That’s impossible”. I knew my fitness levels and I knew that a thirty-minute run was definitely not 9 weeks away for me. And, to be honest, it took me more than 9 weeks to get there. I had to repeat the first week because my stamina just wasn’t quite there yet. I also had to space out my runs so I was doing slightly less than 3 a week, because my lifestyle (and fitness levels) made it hard for me to run every other day. And I had to take a lot of breaks to let my shins recover because my crap trainers meant I kept getting shin splints! But it didn’t matter how long it took me to complete the Couch to 5K. What matters is that I completed it, in my own time, and progressed from literally sitting on the couch doing nothing, to running for thirty minutes without dropping dead.”