How many of us have started fresh as a beginner, or maybe after a long hiatus, laced up our shoes, hit the pavement, and been met with one of the following? Option one, after a short distance at your fastest pace, you’re out of breath, everything hurts, and you can’t imagine one more painful step. Or option two, you somehow breeze through a few miles, and then wake up sore the next day and retire from running?
It’s our natural tendency to not want to ease into something new. We want to be experts right away! But especially with a beginner running plan, we need to let our bodies adjust to a new routine and allow our muscles to catch up to our ambition.
Couch to 5K (C25K) was designed for just that purpose. Josh Clark started on his own like we mentioned above, and when his mother expressed interest in running, he knew that she couldn’t possibly go full steam right out of the gate and stick with it. So he created a beginner running program based upon walk/jog intervals, so that she could gradually increase her run times, while minimizing the risk of burnout or injury.
C25K is literally a step by step program that, in 9 weeks, takes you from sitting on the couch to completing a 5K, the most popular race distance in the world. The convenience of the app, paired with the website: www.c25k.com, allows anyone with a smartphone to access the program. Playing your favorite music, the app tells you when to walk and when to run or jog, giving you time to recover between each block.
Interval training helps even the most experienced runners, but the Couch to 5K plan is for everyone. If you have always had a distance run on your bucket list, but didn’t know where to start, we highly recommend that you check it out. And check in with us along the way, we would love to cheer you on!
