I Graduated!

This past Saturday I officially graduated!! I know the time has passed already for all the high school, college, etc. graduations and I know I'm well past the age of someone that is graduating from high school. What I did graduate from though was Couch to 5K!

Yep - Eight weeks passed in what seemed the blink of an eye. It started off with little short intervals and then gradually upped the ante until I was running for 20 minutes, then 23 minutes, then 25, then 28, and finally for 30 minutes solid!

This was my second time through the C25K program; the first time was truly my first foray into running and took place back in 2009. This was definitely different than that time. It was easier in some ways, but scarier in others. I couldn't help the little voice in the back of my head so many times - the one that said "is that your knee twinging?" "is that a pain in your leg?" "are you going too fast, pushing too hard?" But I found that if I just kept putting one foot in front of the other that little voice got quieter and quieter. I don't know if it will ever completely go away, but I think it is realizing that it doesn't need to be such a nuisance!

The reality is that I probably didn't need to do C25K. I probably could have just gradually increased my running all on my own; but I'm glad I did do a structured program because it helped to rein me in. I think without the structure of C25K I would have been running further & faster than I am which isn't necessarily a good thing. Slow and steady is working and I'm gradually feeling like a real runner again.

So what's next? I am doing a virtual 5k race, in celebration of my graduation, this Friday and then next week I'll start the 10k Jeff Galloway app; however, I'm going to start it up at Week 6. I really feel like I don't need 13 weeks to get through this one and I'm itching to get back to half marathon training.

For the record, I used the C25K by Zen Labs from the iTunes app store and it was fantastic. It was a free app, but honestly, I would have paid for it because it was everything I needed it to be. It allowed me to play my own music and it worked great every single time I used it. I had no issues with crashing or not working as expected. If you're looking for a C25K app - I highly recommend it. Oh, and what's even more awesome? They donate to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. You can't go wrong with that!!