Anyone who has ever tried or is currently doing the C25K (Couch to 5K) program will understand the title of this post and why Week 5 Day 3 deserves its own dedicated post.

The C25K program (link is the free app I use on my iPhone) is well known for getting people to run their first 5K from scratch in 8 weeks and I thought in the midst of my summertime sadness, I’d give fitness a try to increase my energy.

The program lays out an 8 week plan with three days of running each week promising that if you follow the program, you’ll be running your first 5K in only 2 months.

It started off easy enough. The first week asks for alternating 60 second jogs with 90 seconds of walking in between for 20 minutes.

Now, as a background, I’m not a complete newbie to running. When I do hit the gym, which used to be only once a month at best (as I mentioned in my first post about running), all I really ever do is run on the treadmill. But it was always limited to a 15 minute timeframe or whenever I got to the 1 mile mark, never more.

To be honest, starting off that first week of C25K, I found it too easy. And too boring. I couldn’t get myself to spend 20 minutes on the treadmill so while I would run the 60 seconds, I would hit next on the app only halfway through the 90 seconds of walking to finish up quicker.

That’s not the only rebellious step I took. I found it hard to run 3 times a week as the program required so at most I only made my way to the gym twice a week.

In my impatience, realizing that from Week 1-4, each of the 3 training days was a repeat requirement, I decided that I would skip straight from Week 1 Day 1 to Week 2 Day 1 to Week 3 Day 1 and so on till I hit Week 5.

I’m sure whoever developed the C25K would not approve of my method.

I started the program on June 25, and had finished Week 4 by July 5. I thought things were going well.

Before the C25K program, I was only able to run maybe 5 minutes nonstop before having to walk and by Week 5, this limit was tested. Although tested, I was still able to complete up to Week 5 Day 2.

Then… I saw what was coming… the dreaded Couch to 5K: Week 5 Day 3.

I referenced it in my first post about running and called the program crazy for subjecting us to go from an 8 minute to a 20 minute nonstop run within the same week.

Right away, I had the wrong mindset as you’ll see reflected in that post. I had no doubt in my mind I would fail.

So I decided not to even try it. I instead thought the logical thing to do was to skip it and try to build up slowly.

I was even losing motivation to finish the C25K upon hitting the roadblock. So what do I do in such situations? I look for motivation on the internet of course as any normal person would 🙂

At first I searched “Couch to 5K” on google, but then decided I wanted to narrow my search down to the exact challenge I’m facing so I decided to type “Week 5 Day 3” without any mention of C25K.

Surprisingly enough my search hit the jackpot! It just goes to show you how popular the C25K program is that I was immediately met with results like these:

Shockingly (or I guess not so shockingly), I wasn’t the only person who thought Week 5 Day 3 was ludicrous. Some, like me, decided to put off the task at hand, but then I saw some golden comments with people who succeeded and said it was the best thing ever.

They said, all I had to do was push. That it was mental not physical. That my body is capable of much more than I give it credit for. That I just had to slow down the pace and trust the process.

I figured that if the C25K program was so popular, there must be many people who experienced success with the program. And the slightly competitive side of me took over. If they could do it, so can I.

So I tried it.. On August 2nd, I slowed my already snail pace of 5 miles/hr to 4.5 miles/hr and… did it. I officially made it through Week 5 Day 3!

So to anyone else doing the C25K program thinking of quitting because you think Week 5 Day 3 is too big of a hurdle… my biggest piece of advice is to slow it down! Slow down to a pace where you can finish the 20 minute run because once you finish this step, you’ll find that you’ve overcome that mental block and now you can do anything!

To make sure it wasn’t a fluke, I tried it once again. On August 6, I followed up with Week 6 Day 3 program of a 22 minute nonstop run and actually surpassed it by running 25 minutes (aka Week 7 goal!).

The best part of it was that for the first time since I started the program, I felt like I could still “do more” which according to the program is how I’m supposed to feel to know that I was going at the right pace.

My goal of running the 5K in 30 minutes (which I know is actually slow by most people’s standard) is still far-fetched based on my snail pace, but I’ve always done better with small goals one step at a time. So I’m going to take this slowly with my first goal being to run 30 minutes non-stop followed by 5K nonstop before trying to increase my speed.