Yesterday I picked up the new issue of Body + Soul, which I sometimes like. I bought it because it had an article about the “World’s Best Diet” and some power foods that could help your health. WELL, the article turned out to be a summary of a book I already own! Ha! Oh well, it was still nice to look at all the pretty pictures.
Anyway, it had an article in it about how to get started running. Running is something I desperately want to do. I don’t know why, I just feel so drawn to it. But for some reason, I’ve been terrified to get started. I go and look at the Couch to 5k plan about once a week, and I *think* about doing it, but to be honest, it actually seems too hard for me.
The first week of C25K recommends starting with alternating 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking, for a full 20 minutes. That’s 8 full minutes of jogging, your first time out. I honestly don’t think I can do that. I guess maybe I should TRY it before I say that, but I have a pretty good idea of how fit I am at this point in time, and I don’t think I’m up for 8 minutes of jogging.
But anyway, the Body + Soul running plan is even simpler – it really is for beginners. You can find it online here, but here are the basics.
- You start with a 5-minute brisk walking warm-up.
- Your start with only 10 minutes. (excluding the warm-up)
- You alternate jogging 30 seconds to 60 seconds, with walking 60 seconds to 120 seconds.
- You do that for just 10 minutes.
- You do this 3x a week, slowly increasing your running time until you can run all 10 minutes.
- After you can run all ten minutes, you slowly work on running longer, but never increasing by more than 10% (i.e. 1 minute) per week.
If you do the minimum amount of running the first week (30 seconds) and the maximum amount of walking (2 minutes) you would only have to run for a total of 2 minutes your first time out. As opposed to the 8 minutes you would have to do on C25K. It just seems so much less overwhelming to me – plus to think I would only have to do it for 10 minutes!
I don’t know. I do 100% believe that your workouts should be challenging (dare I even say HARD), but I also feel like when you’re first starting, sometimes you need to tackle something you KNOW you can do, so that you don’t get discouraged straight out of the gate.
Anyway, I plan to give this a try. I have Boot Camp tonight, but tomorrow night, I’m lacing up sneakers and going running.
But only for 2 minutes. :)
Anyone else interested in giving it a try?
