The dreaded 20-minute run is over!

The first part of the run is a gentle uphill slope for about half a mile, and it’s usually the toughest part, too, so I slowed my usual pace right down to keep myself going for the rest of the run. It helped to tell myself that as soon as my first running foot hit the ground I had under 20 minutes to go, and even though I’m running for time rather than distance, it helped to think of the run in terms of the distance I’d need to cover rather than the time I’d need to spend running.

I was surprised when the podcast narrator said I was halfway through – and by that point I was on a downhill slope anyway, wasn’t feeling out of breath, and was happy to keep on going. The steep hill that came soon after wasn’t much fun, but as ever it was manageable, and I got my breath back fine on the way down again. The only unpleasant bit of the run was coming back down Byres Road for the last five minutes or so, which was (as ever) crowded with people and required a lot of slowing down and speeding up and dodging around the crowds, which I always find more tiring than a straight steady run. Just as I was starting to think I really was getting quite tired now and my calf muscles wanted to go and lie down for a long, long time, the narrator said there were only sixty seconds left, and I knew I’d make it all the way to the end.

1.7 miles in 20 minutes. Not as fast as I could have been, but less exhausted than I was expecting. I can always concentrate on picking up the speed again in the longer consecutive runs in weeks 7-9.

Week 6, day 1 is a return to intervals:

Run 5 minutes
Walk 3 minutes
Run 8 minutes
Walk 3 minutes
Run 5 minutes.

Because I decided to push myself a little more speed-wise and get a faster pace than I’d been managing in the previous run, this was definitely tougher, and the steep hill that came in half-way through the 8-minute run was hard in a way it hadn’t really been for a while. This was also about the time that the podcast narrator said that it was probably quite tempting to go faster than last week, that wouldn’t be a great idea, which was not really great timing. If it’s really that tempting and unwise for everyone, why not mention it at the start? Or must we all learn from the hubris that comes of struggling up a steep hill through the Botanics at a pace of about 0.00005 miles per hour, while every toddler in Glasgow is out playing with its mother? Bah. Still, I kept up the same pace overall for all the runs, coming in a little short of a 10-minute mile.

As for the hills, I’m sure they’re doing me a world of good but I’m not loving them. My route will have to get longer again this week (right now the five-minute cooldown walk ends only after I’ve got back to my building, gone up the steps to my flat, and made it across the living room to the kitchen, which leaves little room for expanding), and it’s not looking good terrain-wise…

Week 5 is a change to the pattern of all the previous weeks, where the same run was repeated 3 times. This week, the sessions go like this:

Day 1: Run for 5 minutes, walk for 3, run for 5, walk for 3, and then run for 5.
Day 2: Run for 8 minutes, walk for 5, and then run for 8.
Day 3: Run for 20 minutes.

Day 3 is the one that scares people. You can see why.

I finished day 2 today, after a fairly easy and uneventful day 1. Day 2 was noticeably tougher, especially in the first 8-minute run, but I did notice that most of my issues with it were mental ones – there’s no other reason it should have felt tougher in the first five minutes of the run, at least.

I’ve developed a good system for dealing with my inherent laziness, which would prefer to sit at home and play internet spaceships than go out for a run: hear out its objections, but make it clear it still doesn’t get a vote. If I try to ignore its complaining, it just complains louder until I do pay attention. If I don’t ignore it, but instead start trying to counter all the points it makes – “yes, it will be cold outside and I’ll be worn out and tired, but I’ll feel so good by the end of the run!” – I get exhausted before I’ve even begun. So instead, I nod and smile and hear it out, all while getting ready to go out for the run I’m damn well going to do anyway. So it goes like this:

My brain: But this sofa is so comfortable! We don’t have to go out.
Me, changing into running clothes: Okay.
My brain: It’ll be so far, and it’s so cold outside. And what if this week’s too hard, hmmm? What if this week’s too hard and we just fail?
Me, tying back hair: Yup, that would be bad.
My brain: There’s just no good reason to go outside into all that weather, and end up out of breath and exhausted for no real benefit. I rest my case.
Me, walking out of the door: Indeed.

So I tried to apply this to my brain objecting mid-run, too, by just letting it rant and tuning it out rather than try to bribe it with “only a few more minutes!”. That seemed to work quite well; as soon as I wasn’t thinking about how much further I had to run, and how that was forever and I was clearly going to die, I started running much more easily. Very glad of an interesting world of outside distractions; I doubt I’d ever manage this on a treadmill.

Also, I found out today that my running speed is consistently about 10 minutes per mile now, so I’m running at the same pace I’d be doing if I was doing the Couch to 5k programme by distance rather than time. This is much faster than I thought I was going, and gives me plenty of leeway to slow right down if – when – I’m finding Saturday’s 20-minute run tough.

Which I will. Because it’s twenty minutes of non-stop running. And even though I know this is possible, and that the real block to finishing is mental rather than physical, I also know that my mind is pretty powerful and really doesn’t think twenty minutes is doable right now. We’ll see.

Are both complete.

Week 3 felt a little like… well, not quite like cheating, but definitely somewhere in cheating’s general timezone. Although the time spent actually running was the same as in week 2, the overall length of each session was much shorter, to the point where finishing the session felt like skipping out halfway through.

Day 2 of Week 3 made up for a shorter timespan by turning the weather up to some ‘cataclysmic’ setting you don’t usually see outside of hurricanes. It was raining a little when I set out, big cold splashy drops of rain that didn’t seem like they’d keep it up very long, and I stuck to my usual weather-related running resolution (if you wait for good weather in Glasgow, you’ll only run three times a year) and kept going anyway.

By the end of the first 90-second run, I noticed that people’s umbrellas were dragging them along like sails in the really-quite-strong-now wind. By the end of the next – three minutes – I was soaked to the skin, the only other people outside were sprinting to get under shelter as quickly as they could, and if it hadn’t been just as far to go back as to go on I’d have done the same myself. The final two runs took me over the top of a hill, running right into the wind with the rain so hard it hurt. It felt like all the forces of Mordor were trying to stop me finishing that run – and damned if I was going to let all the forces of Mordor beat me. I doubt I made any new speed records with the wind fighting me every step of the way, but dammit, I made it home with all the runs done.

The third day of week 3 was uneventful; the first three-minute run still felt a little harder than anything that had come before, but I wasn’t tired at the end of it. I was still worried about week 4, though, and the jump in run lengths: from 90-second and 3-minute runs to 3- and 5-minute runs, on a longer route.

And indeed, week 4, day 1 did not go so well.

The first three minutes was fine, easier than I’d expected it to be, and the five-minute run that followed wasn’t so bad either. I can definitely feel a difference in how long it takes me to run before getting out of breath, or having my leg muscles start filing official complaints, and that’s quite a satisfying feeling. But by the second half of the session, I’d made a wrong turn before thinking about it, and decided not to bother turning round and doubling back on myself when I did. That was fine to start off with, a steep route down to the river that took me off the roads for the first time – and then the path started to go uphill again, just in time for the final five-minute run. Uphill, and uphill, and uphill. A gentle slope at first, but one that turned into a really steep road just as I was starting to wonder whether I’d even be able to manage another five-minute run on the flat. But I was determined to keep running, no matter how slowly or laboriously – and it wasn’t a tenth as difficult as I thought it would be, not even when I reached the top of that hill and turned right into another one. I was completely out of breath by the time the run was over – but I wasn’t walking, either.

After that, days 2 and 3 were fine – tough, but absolutely doable. It’s week 5 that worries me now, with the jump from 5-minute runs at the beginning of the week to an uninterrupted 20-minute run at the end. The fear!

The schedule for runs this week:
- warmup walk of five minutes
- 90-second run
- 90-second walk
- 3-minute run
- 3-minute walk
- 90-second run
- 90-second walk
- 3-minute run
- final cooldown walk.

So it’s the same amount of running as last week, just more condensed.

Three minutes wasn’t the killer I feared it would be, although the first one was uphill – not a steep slope, but a slope all the same – and my legs were really feeling it by the end. The second was mostly on the flat and much easier. I think my calf muscles are going to ache tomorrow, though!

Speaking of which, my knees still hurt a bit. Not all the time, not even that badly, and it’s mostly gone after the first few steps of running, but I’m dubious.

This week was much shorter than the previous two, and that was sort of disappointing. I’d have liked to be out there for longer. Still, there are only two more runs of Week 3 to go, and then Week 4 is back to over 30 minutes again. I’m planning a slightly different route for Week 4, to take account of the extra time – and, hopefully, to give me some new scenery to look at when the 5-minute runs start hurting…

I’m really, really pleased with how well Week 2 went. By Day 3 I’d really got the hang of pacing myself so I could breathe easily while running (helped hugely by having to slow right down to weave through all the people on a very busy Byres Road). At the end of the final run, I could absolutely have kept going; I was even sort of disappointed it was all over so soon. It’s probably for the best that it was, though, since I’ve noticed a few aches and pains hanging around in my shins and my knees and that’s something I’d rather not push, oh yes indeed.

It’s grey out there, though. Grey and full of puddles. I like being outside anyway, even when it’s going dark and everyone I jog past is wearing three parkas and a hat, but I’m very much looking forward to longer days and lighter evenings. 2011 will probably be the only year I’ve ever actually welcomed the clocks going forward in the spring.