One of the nice things about the later stages of C25K is that it gives you the option to focus your run on either time or distance. Ideally, you would do both, but I’m not sure how many people doing this after a lifetime on the couch actually manage a sub 30 5K within the nine weeks. There may be some who can, but I’m certainly not one of them.
So far, I have been going by time (running for however many minutes) and this has really helped me get going, but after Wednesday’s 5K I know that I can keep running for over thirty minutes. The problem is, when I run 5K, I want to be done before the 30 minutes are up. I want to run faster.
So, as my high school Physics teacher taught me, Speed equals Distance ever Time (s=d/t). I know it’s not what he meant, but for me, for the next few weeks, distance is going to take priority over time. And, strangely enough, focusing on distance has helped me improve my speed.
I guess this is because in the earlier stages of C25K, all I had to do was keep moving; but now, when I’m completely exhausted and can’t wait to finish, focusing on distance means that if I pick up my feet a bit more and push myself a little bit harder, it will all be over a lot sooner. And that, of course, gives me a better time.
So, for today’s run, Week 6 Day 2, I ditched the timed voice prompts on my C25K app and plugged in to Run Keeper. Here are the results:
I had to change the settings to miles rather than kilometres, and I know it’s a shorter distance than I ran on Wednesday, but my average pace was over 30 seconds faster and that includes a walking segment. I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings when I finally finish Week 6!
How do you set your daily running goals? Do you focus on running for a specific time or distance? Please share your thoughts and ideas in the comments.