Ryan and I started the Couch to 5K program at the start of July and we are now rounding out Week 9 (the final week) of the program. As I had mentioned before, I had completed the Couch to 5K in 2010, and I remembered how exhilarating it felt to finish the program. At that point in time, I was already in pretty good shape, so the program was just the extra cherry on top.
However, I didn’t maintain my running after that, and although I had signed up for a couple of 5K races in early 2011, I didn’t do too well with my running (at one race, I pulled a muscle in my back and had to walk the entire race with a weird gait).
As I have probably mentioned over these past several years, I have slowly gotten out of shape until last year, when I stepped on the scale again, I saw how much I had gained back in four years. Ack! So since last year, I have been working out again and slowly losing the weight again (and hopefully for the last time!). But the journey has been a lot of stop-and-go this past year: Ryan and I worked with a few personal trainers last year and they helped us get back into shape! But then we had to discontinue with them because of expenses and the holidays.
Then we tried going running on our own and that didn’t pan out too well either; we just found ourselves walking more than actually running. I was getting frustrated with our stop-and-go exercise routine come June of this year, so after our trip to NYC, I suggested we hop back onto the bandwagon with the Couch to 5K program.
This time, it’s working SO much better. There have been tough times in the Couch to 5K journey, e.g., I still can’t figure out a proper breathing technique for myself, but we have kept up with the schedule and our phone app’s “coach” has been helpful in keeping our pace and timing well.
I made a list of goals this week about what all I want to accomplish over these last few months of 2015: one of those goals is to run two 5K races! We are gearing up to register for the Rock ‘n’ Roll 5K next month; hopefully we’ll find another 5K for November or December!