Hey Steve,
As of the end of March 2013 I had been working two nearly full time consulting gigs (6:00-13:00 in Boston and 14:30-20:30 up in Concord, NH, 75 miles or so north of Boston) for a period of over two years. In April I left the Boston gig and signed up to go full time in Concord; that left me with some spare time. I am 5' 8" in height and by that April I was tipping the scales at something over 250 (don't know how far over, I was too afraid to get in the freakin' scale), and I decided to use some of that newly acquired spare time to start running and to lose weight.
I took it real easy at first, and instead of concentrating on speed, I concentrated on distance, distance, and more distance, always very slow, and almost always on a dirt trail. I became a disciple of LSD (Long Slow Distance), so much so I joined the running club of my new company as well as a local club, and started coaching part time as well. Over the last 3+ years I have helped coach many dozens of folks over the C25K hump you yourself are now attempting.
The cool thing about LSD is you develop a pretty fair amount of speed whether you want to or not. In my case, in a period of almost exactly one year I went from being very overweight and very-very slow when I left the Boston gig, down to about 190 along with being able to run 5Ks in the 21 to 22 minute range, and later in 2014 a half-marathon in 1:42, and those numbers were when I was 57.
If you've read this far, read the following as these points are key to success for most folks who attempt the C25K program:
- As mentioned above, my coaching philosophy is in tune with the LSD methodology, errr, with a slight twist (more on that below), and away from what I call TFFFS (Too Fast, too Far, too Frequently, too Soon).
- If followed properly, a good C25K will help the beginning runner avoid TFFFS.
- The "slight twist" mentioned above: Once a beginning runner works his or her way through C25K, I recommend they avoid running faster at all cost (unless they're running in an occasional race) until they can run at least an hour non-stop; once to that point, say five to six miles, start stepping up the speed for the last half mile, then the last mile, then more. This should allow you to build the endurance to run longer distances without injury and without pushing your body's infrastructure too hard until you've gotten in better shape to endure the rigors of running.
- As a general rule, muscles, breathing, and cardio fitness develops fairly rapidly.
- As a general rule, joints, bones, and connective tissue take a long time (as in months and years) to develop.
- Keeping things slow and long allows your body to develop in synch with all of its parts and systems and avoid injury.
- You do not have to train fast to run fast; most of my runners who are relatively new to running train in the ten to twelve minute per mile zone, however, almost all of them have been able to break the 30 minute 5K threshold within a year of starting C25K.
- One other thing to consider is the surface, running on dirt, grass, sand, or even a soft track absorbs considerable impact, and can dramatically reduce one’s incidence of injury compared to running on hard surfaces.
This is a before and after picture, one is from mid May 2013, and the other is from the first week of May 2014 when I ran my first sub-22:00 5K (I'll leave it to your imagnination to figure out which is which) 🙂 :
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