C25K – Progress Summary

I’ve had a go at summarising the overall ratings of each run over the course of the C25K program, just to see if I could spot any patterns. The rating is a summary of  my general feeling about a run, bold rows are the first run at a new time. There are at lot of factors that ultimately decide for me if it was a good or bad run, including (in order):

• mental – by far the biggest factor (75%+) in any run is my mental attitude going into and during. I’ve turned up to races already defeated and turned easy runs into a waking nightmare.
• physical – I have over done it on a few occasions on the rest days only to regret it the on the next run, e.g. went walking for 10 miles, spent 2 hours on my hands and knees gardening.
• food/water – I need a good 4-5 hours between eating and running to avoid any issues, in the same vein I try to avoid turning up with any unnecessary extra weight if you get my drift. I don’t think I’ve run far enough that hydration has really made a huge difference to me, even if I am sweating from the start.
• weather – not a huge factor unless it’s high humidity, muggy weather tends to sap the strength out of me pretty quickly (it’s just nasty). Similarly time of day in the end didn’t make any difference to me, although I have a preference to get it done early in the day, just got get it out of the way.
• kit – so far hasn’t made a huge difference to the outcome of a run. Obviously running shoes are the most important piece of kit to get right, Be careful breaking them in, that you don’t end up breaking yourself, as I almost did.

My rating would typical take into account all of these factors.