Zen Labs Couch to 5k C25k Week 4 Day 3

Week 4 Day 3

I'm halfway done with Couch to 5K! It will be interesting to see if I can actually run a 5k in four weeks though. Today was the same workout as the last two of the program. It was a five minute warm up followed by 3 minutes of running, 90 seconds of walking, 5 minutes of running, 3 minutes of walking and then we repeat starting at the 3 minutes of running. Then it was a five minute cool down period. 

I walk to the track before I start running. I run the app during the walk so the walk to the track counts for my warm up, but I forgot to pause it, so I lost 5 seconds of the first running segment. I didn't think that would be a big deal though. I just planned on running five seconds into the first walking segment. However, I managed to unpause the workout and no not it! I didn't know it had happened until I heard the little voice tell me to walk. I quickly reset the workout so it started over again, but I was less than 5 minutes from the track. UGH! It messed with my whole plan too. I've been finishing my running segments near the gate end of the track and I knew that if I walked two minutes on the track before I started running, it was going to mess up where I finished my run which was going to prolong the workout even more and I was already running late. Oh well. Who cares about getting to work on time! 

I started my run on the opposite end of the track. I did my normal slow running. It's so slow, it's barely even running, but it's definitely not walking so we'll just let me call myself a runner. During the second three minute run, I really tried to push myself to do the full lap in the 3 minutes. It didn't quite work, I should have picked up the pace a little bit sooner. I was pretty out of breath once those three minutes were up, but I didn't make it the full lap. I came pretty close though. During the second five minute run, I tried to go a bit faster than my normal super slow pace because I wanted to make up that half a lap that I knew I was going to be behind. It worked. I managed to finish my run at the gate end of the track. I was pretty happy about that. My heart might not have been so happy though. I got up to 171 bpm. Oopsy. I'm not really sure where I'm supposed to keep my heart rate for healthy running, but I do know that I can't sustain 171 bpm for very long. 

My shins didn't really hurt during this workout. My calves were on fire at times, but they weren't as bad as they were earlier in the week. I'm surprised too since I did P90X3 CVX the day before! I'll write about that crazy workout in a bit. I'm still not sure what possessed me to try that thing

Next week starts off pretty doable. It's four five minute running intervals and then we move up to 8 minutes and five minutes. On Friday it gets interesting. I'm supposed to run for 20 minutes straight. No walking! I doubt I'll survive that one, but I'm going to give it a try. I might have to take a break, but at least I'll have a good idea of where I'm at. The week after that goes back to having walking breaks. I'm not sure why they throw that one 20 minute running section in there, but that's why they get paid the big bucks!

Polar M400

Here's the screen shot from my Polar M400. The blue line is my speed. The red line is my heart rate. The grey line is the elevation. My heart rate came down really fast except for that last run. It took a smidge longer to come down after I slowed down to a walk. According to stuff that Leslie Sansone has said during my Walk Away the Pounds days, that means my heart is pretty healthy. She talked about how a healthy heart will recover faster. I kinda wish I had gotten this little gadget sooner. I loved my BodyMedia Link because of the fun charts about how many calories I was burning per minute, but that was just fun stuff. The Polar M400 actually shows useful information. I love this thing. I just wish that the band wasn't a rubbery plastic. I'm going to experiment with a few things to make it more comfortable because I truly do love this gadget!