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On Sunday I did the first run of week 5. I made several mistakes with it, my husband came along too which meant we went off a lot faster than I normally would. Because of the rain we took a different route so whilst the terrain was less of a steeplechase there were more people around. So we started jogging along the canal towpath caught up and overtook a walker just as Claire said 'ok you can walk again now' hubby then route marched us through the walk as he didn't want to be overtaken by the walker again so when it came to running again I hadn't recovered and the last two runs went from bad to worse. When I made it back to the the road I almost cried I was so disappointed as I was so ready for this run. When I got home and recovered a bit and looked at the RunKeeper stats it actually wasn't as bad as I thought I ran for at least 13 minutes and the speed was much quicker than i've done before.

So yesterday I repeated it - almost a minute a mile slower, on my own and the usual route - no problem all runs slow but complete. So tomorrow I'm repeating it again to speed up the runs a bit. I'm not sure how next week will go as we're away for a few days somewhere way hillier than here so I'm thinking of ditching the app for a week and just running - walking when I need to, that I think will be weird as I have got very used to Claire telling me what to do.

Loving this app and very impressed with how many people who were languishing in week 2/3 when I started reading these forums have reached the dizzy heights of week 9. I'm catching you up hare and the tortoise style.

Hope your holiday goes well.

We've just moved away from London to somewhere with proper outdoors, and I've been getting in to running through it.

It's not tended, so there are patches that I'm not happy to run through due to the bumps, holes and rocks so I've been mixing up walking and running, and it's working really nicely.

I set a total running time goal and go out and walk / run until I've done that or exceeded it. The area is also hilly, so it's nice to let myself go back to a walk for the steep bits I'll be increasing the run and reducing the walk. It's lovely getting out there and being surrounded by birds insects and sheep instead of cars!

Happy running,
Benjohn

It sounds like you're doing a great job. I've been running slowly and not worrying about other runners who run faster. I'm starting week 7 now and once I've finished the programme I will consider myself to have a base level of fitness, so I'll focus on speed over short distances, maybe 30 seconds all out running followed by a minute of rest. From what I've read, this is far more beneficial for you that running for long durations. But still, I think it's important to start off slowly as in this app.

All the best,
Jack

Thank you to everyone for the support. Thursday I repeated the 5 minutes run 1 week 5 again and for the first time ever my RunKeeper app that I use along side clocked my av speed at below a 14 min mile (I know pathetically slow but a massive achievement for me) tomorrow I'm going to do the run 2, 2 sets of 8 minutes and I'll leave the 20 minute one until after our holiday - still putting it off.

Hi - I just wanted to tell you that I attempted the 20 min run last week and failed miserably. I went back to the beginning of week 5 and repeated the first two runs. I've just come back in and (I can hardly believe I'm writing this) I did the whole 20 minutes!!!!! Going back and repeating it really helped. Trust me on this if I can do it you can too - when I started 7 weeks ago I could hardly run for one minute. Have a great holiday and good luck with the 20 mins when u get back.