Couch to 5K Day 2

tired

Today was day two of my Couch to 5K adventure. Actually it was day three, but the app gives you a day off between runs (walk/run/walks) to get over the delayed onset muscle soreness, usually referred to as DOMS. This is necessary.

It upped the ante today. Day one was a five minute brisk walk as a warm up followed by six run/walk intervals consisting of a sixty second run followed by a ninety second recovery walk. The programme ended with a five minute warm down walk and stretches. Today they slipped in an extra couple of intervals. Other than having to extend my loop in the park to accommodate the extra distance I didn’t notice much difference, which is probably the idea.

So far the programme has been pretty good. The only thing I would like to change is the female voice prompt, who tells me when to start and stop running, which is fine. She unfortunately also says things in what I think is a Californian motivational accent, like “Keep going awesome runner!!!”, “You’re doing grrreat!!!” and “You’ve reached the halfway point fantastic!!!!!”. For me, it would probably work better if they had recruited an ex-sergeant-major to say thing like “Get your a*se into gear start running”, “I suppose your doing a little bit better than last time, but not much” or “OK you can have a rest – WALK – don’t just stop you lazy sod”.  From my perspective much more motivational.

Evidence if required is available on Strava.

Back to Blogging

You will probably have noticed that I haven’t posted much if anything so far this year. Those of you who know me personally will realise that this was because my partner Grace was in the terminal stages of her three and a half year struggle with Stage Four Ovarian Cancer. Sadly that struggle ended on the 30th of April.

I think that it is time to dip my toe back into the blogging pool, but to be honest I’m not really sure what I want to write about. I don’t want “A Scotsman in Suburbia” to become a “How I am coping with grief” blog. However, how I am coping with grief is a large part of my life at the moment, so I can’t really ignore it.

I have my opinions on the European Union referendum. I am strongly in favour of remaining part of the EU, but I can’t summon up the energy to make the case in the same way that I did two years ago for the Scottish independence referendum. Similarly I haven’t really got much enthusiasm for commenting on cycling at the moment. I haven’t even been out on my bike much other than the occasional ride down to the pub.

My friend Lord Wallington has been trying to persuade me to start doing the Roundshaw Downs Parkrun, whether as therapy or just to try and get rid of my gut I’m not sure. I even got as far as registering, downloading and printing off the required barcode. However I chickened out this morning. It’s not that I am totally unfit, it’s just that I have never run. Instead I downloaded a Couch to 5K app to my phone and have decided to follow that for the mean time. I did the first run/walk/run thingy today. Evidence should it be required is available on Strava. I survived it reasonably well. I might even go so far as to say I enjoyed it.

That is kind of where I am at for the time being. Hopefully more normal blogging will resume in the nearish future.