forgotten_aria

We all know I'm not you, but I'll tell you what has worked for me.

First, everybody repeats weeks in c25k. It's not a matter of "if" you repeat one, it is when. Or two. Or five. It doesn't matter when you repeat one, just don't get discouraged.

Second, nowish is a fine time of year to start C25K. It's cold, but you can wear more layers for the early parts anyway. When it gets harder, weather will be warmer making it easier to decide to run, or decide to run in the evening.

Third, I didn't start c25k for weight loss. I did it because I wanted to be able to go further without machines, more easily. Changing my body shape was a side effect. Even if your end target is weight loss, I suggest you don't even look at it until you've gotten your body to doing 30 minutes. Then, you'll have an important tool: you can exercise a long period of time, fairly easily.

Fourth, I do c25k by time, and I manage my timing by music. Early on you can manage by just counting seconds mentally, but once the periods become long I made a playlist with music of the appropriate length. When the song changes, switch between running and walking. Oh, and I picked a song as an endcap: something which says "OK, you're done." Me, I chose Coulton's "Still alive," followed by "I feel fantastic." Consistency there made me stretch to go all the way, rather than end early.

Fifth, don't care about your pace. Seriously. You can jog really, really slowly and you will. Once you are running 30 minutes at a time Dave can probably give you ideas for picking up your pace, or you can look at it as "ok, I get enough exercise" and your pace will very slowly increase on its own. Because I run by time, not distance, my only hint that my pace is improving is that at the end of the jog I have gone a little further.

Sixth, once you're running more than a couple minutes at a time pick things to think about while jogging. I plot roleplaying games, solve work problems, and all sorts of things. Anything to keep my mind off jogging. Do that and it'll suddenly be much further into the run than you expect.


I tried pretty hard to make good associations with c25k early on. That helped keep me going.

Before I did c25k, I could not imagine myself running 30 minutes at a time. I couldn't imagine myself fighting a half-dozen NPCs for over an hour at a LARP (they got to take turns). When I walk into the red line and hear messages about service interruption, it wasn't an option to just walk right back out and run to work.
Now I can do all of those.