In February of this year, I made 5 running goals when deciding to re-attempt the Couch to 5K program I had failed twice at. I’m proud to announce that I can check off two more goals: completing a 5k nonstop and 5 miles nonstop run!

Here’s a snippet of the 5 running goals I made for this year:

At first I was off to a running start (pun intended hehe). Two weeks after I set my goals, I had surprised myself by finishing goal #2 even before goal #1. However, since then, things have gone downhill.

As I mentioned in my March update, I had a setback in my running progress since that eventful day when not only did I fail to get my dream home but also failed short of completing the 5K run to graduate from the Couch to 5K program.

Since then, not only have I taken steps back in my progress to run the 5K nonstop, I’ve also taken steps back in my weekly 5 mile “long run”.

The more I failed, the more discouraged I became. I started to have doubts in my mind that this was it. I wasn’t going to get any better. It especially felt discouraging to hear my friends who I run with on these long runs set new personal records while I felt like I was only getting worse.

But despair no more! I’m here to announce that after a seemingly long time with no progress, I’ve finally accomplished 2 more of my running goals! I completely goal #1 and goal #3. And it was accomplished on the same day.

The Recap

Since I have to memorialize this moment, please bear with me while I take a step by step recap of how this moment came to be. I’m hoping I won’t need it but if I ever lose motivation down the line, I’m making this recap so I can look back on this post and say to myself, “you’ve done it once, you can do it again.” So without further ado, I start my recap.

On this miraculous day, I initially decided to take a step back and go way down to Week 5 of the C25K program of running 20 minutes nonstop. I didn’t even want to have thoughts of the 5K. Just 20 minutes which is around how long one loop around my neighborhood takes and I’ll be able to go back home and shower.

It started off rough. My Fitbit wouldn’t connect to my phone GPS so I had to entirely give up on tracking on my watch and instead tracked straight on my phone using Strava.

In hindsight, I could’ve tried a couple things. I could have restarted my Fitbit. I could have also tracked straight on my Fitbit app from the phone. Instead, now I have a run logged on my Fitbit with no map which is quite disappointing. But at that moment, I was trying not to get discouraged that yet another thing was going wrong.

But I think all these things going wrong really just took the pressure off. I was only going for a 20 minute run which I felt was doable since I had been doing 15 minute non-stop runs the past weeks. I wasn’t pressuring myself to do a 5K. Just 20 minutes then I get to go home.

I even tried using a new app, the Nike Run Club with guided runs to help me overcome this roadblock. Well, turns out I found it more annoying than anything else since I like to listen to audiobooks instead of music and the coach on the app would randomly talk over my audiobook without pausing it.

Well, thanks to an especially cool day, I felt good after my 20 minutes. As annoying as it was to have to pull my phone out and rewind my audiobook after the coach finished talking each time, it did help that I was constantly reminded to slow down and take it easy.

After 20 minutes, I felt I could keep going so I figured I’d go for Week 6 challenge which was 22 minutes. Then I still felt good and thought I could make it to Week 7 25-minute run which was only 3 minutes more. Then I thought, why not, let’s just make it home which would make me get to around the 30 minute mark. 

Well I passed home before hitting 30 minutes so I kept going which meant I was forced to do another loop. At this point, I knew I hadn’t hit the 5K yet since I’m a slowpoke and nowhere close to running a 5K in sub-30 minute time yet. So of course my next thought was, let’s just go for it and get that 5K over with. So I did. 

Now, this is the good part. It’s when misfortune meets laziness actually works out in my favor.

Since my Fitbit wasn’t working and I was too lazy to pull out my phone to check Strava, I had no clue when I would hit 5K. I knew based on my previous long runs that I usually hit the 5K mark around 36 minutes so I thought I’d at least run for another 6 minutes after I had made it past the 30 minute mark.

Well, I really wanted to make sure I didn’t fall short of a 5K this time so I figured I’d run a little bit past 36 minutes. Since there were hills around my home, I thought my pace today would be slower than my usual pace on my long run that’s on flat terrain so I figured, just do 1-2 more minutes to be safe. 

And by then it was close enough to 40 minutes that I figured, let’s get to 40 minutes and make it a nice number.

40 minutes went by and now I was getting closer to home again. So I thought I’ll just run all the way home which will take me to around a 45-minute run. That will be great since that’s Week 10 of the Couch to 10K app that I’ve also been failing the last 2 weeks.

I hit 45 minutes and was reaching home when I decided why not go for the full 1 hour which is around how long I usually take to do my 5 mile “long run” on the weekends with stops. 

At this point, I was getting tired, but I thought, now or never. If I don’t do this now, I’d always doubt if I can do it.

So lo and behold I made a couple of circles around my home until I hit the 1 hour mark and finally decided to check Strava for distance. 4.94 mile! At that point, of course I had to continue to get 5 miles in. 🙂 

And that is how I was able to conquer the 5K and 5 mile nonstop run all in one day. And, as an added bonus, I accidentally finished the last workout of Couch to 10K (run 60 minutes nonstop). I haven’t quite hit the 10K and with my snail pace I’d probably need 80 minutes to do that. 

But that’s a problem for next time!

3 Days Later

Proud to announce that this is not a fluke! 3 days since running the 5 miles nonstop around my neighborhood, I did the same on my regular 5 mile route that I’ve been running with my friends every week.

Bonus: I hit my personal best 5k and 5 miles time on this run. 🙂 Yes, still slow as heck by most people’s standards but I’m still proud of shedding my pace by 3 minutes/mile from my first run.

What’s Next?

Goals #4 and #5 are probably going to be after-thoughts for a while. My current pace is around the 12-13 minute mark (and that’s on a good day) so nowhere close to a 10 min/mile.

For now my goal is to fight my mind into believing I can and will continue to do 5K and 5 mile runs nonstop. Hopefully speed will come with that.