The ever-difficult follow-up album
C25k
Sunday. Session 2 of couch to 5k. Stiffness from the first session was manageable, back a bit grouchy, and some stiffness in weird places, like ribs but otherwise OK. My legs did feel a little jaded as I walked out this morning. I put that down to an early morning evacuation alarm requiring me to walk down an unplanned 18 flights of stairs. It was a false alarm. Again.
But I did feel slightly jaded and I expected to have to work a little harder. I wanted to reduce the rest time between iterations to 2:30 instead of 3:00 which was inline with my plan. Then any running I do beyond 0:30 is a bonus. It was the same track as Friday and this will likely be my go to until I start running for longer distances / times. Too many road crossings.
1:00/2:30 x 6 was my aiming point and I was able to nail it, typically doing a few seconds over in the run and a few seconds under in the walk. My cheap Chinese health band proving its usefulness there. I definitely had to work a bit harder and felt it more than Friday though. Heart rate showed the same, typically around the 115 mark but did spike up to 130 at one point.
This time I did all 6 running iterations before about-facing and heading for home because I noted Friday that the entire outing was ~7000 steps. I figured I'd extend the “cool down” walk to bring the whole adventure in at 10,000 steps giving me a tick for the day.
I still didn't quite get it right as I was a little light as I got home, so I kept going to the supermarket and picked up some groceries, finishing at ~10,600. So I need to push my turnaround point out a bit farther.
One thing I did differently was bring a small water bottle with me. I didn't on Friday and I could feel myself getting a little stressed as I was reaching home, whereas today I didn't. I drank after I finished the running sections, sipping periodically. Carrying it in a pocket likely didn't help my running, but I think it made a difference during cool down. Although to be fair, today was quite cool compared to Friday.
As I said, I definitely needed to work harder this time. I was blowing more and my lower back was starting to grumble slightly. My back is my biggest limiter. I expect how it is going will drive whether I am able to level up each week or not. Same as it did when increasing walking distances and speed.
I plan on doing an uninterrupted 5km (or 10,000 step) walk tomorrow and then back for more running on Tuesday.