Tuesday, July 6, 2010

My Running Plan

So I'm a bit more than chubby, have asthma, and am 38 years old.  After going too fast with the Couch to 5K program I decided to radically modify the plan for my personal particulars. Here it is:

interval    run       walk    repeat
1          30 sec    3 min    8 times
2            1 min    3 min    7 times
3       1:30 min    3 min    6 times
4            2 min    3 min    6 times
5    2:30 min    2:30 min    6 times
6            3 min    2 min     6 times
7         3:30 min    2 min    6 times
8         4 min    2:30 min    5 times
9    4:30 min    2:30 min    5 times
10      5 min    2:30  min    4 times
11  5:30 min    2:30 min    4 times
13    6:30 min        2 min    4 times
14         7 min        3 min    3 times
15   7:30 min    2:30 min    3 times
16          8 min      2 min    3 times
17       8:30 min    2 min    3 times
18            9 min    1 min    3 times
19         10 min     1 min    3 times
20          15 min    1 min    2 times
21         30 min    0 min     1 time

Each interval may last from 1-2 weeks depending on how well my breathing adapts to the plan.  On the first three sessions of an interval I use my Albuteral inhaler, and if I can do the fourth session without my inhaler and without feeling like I'm sucking wind badly, I can move on to the next interval.  If I am traveling, I stick with my current interval until I am back home.  I don't want to overextend myself and be in a lame position when I have less control over my routines.  So this plan can expand from 21 weeks to 42 (or more) as necessary.  Which, you may note, is far longer than the 9 weeks that Couch to 5K maps out (although, to be fair, they also say that you can spend more time at each step as necessary).

As of today I am in the second week of interval 6 - and will be traveling over the upcoming weekend, so I will spend more than 2 weeks at interval 6.  Which is fine with me.  I'm spending more than 1/2 of my running sessions actually running, which is totally awesome and I feel great and look better than I have in several years.

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