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[randomcyn]

I'm trying Couch-to-5K. I've always said I wanted to, but I never did, because I am deeply lazy. I'm still deeply lazy, so I'm not sure what changed.

Here's the thing, though.

I cannot run for shit.

I've never been able to. I can walk 5K in my sleep - in fact, I generally walk twice that several times a week. But I run for 30 seconds and I'm

Comments

[gleefulfreak]

I ran competitively when I was in school, and got back into it enough when I was living in London (ON) to do a 3K and 5K race before I moved to TO. I got so I could run for an hour and a half. And I can tell you that even when you can run for an hour and a half, often enough you still feel like crap for the first 30 seconds to a minute as the body says WOE and the mind says OMGWTFNO. The trick is to ease off the pace, and keep going. You'll adjust quickly enough.

Mooselet's right about slowing down. So many people try running at a pace that simply isn't sustainable, and then they get blown out in 5 minutes. You really do have to start ridiculously slow - barely faster than a brisk walk, in many cases. So slow you think people are going to point and laugh. Don't worry about trying to bring up the speed until you can run for at least 20-30 minutes continuously (no walk breaks) without feeling like you're going to die.

On preventing weight loss: when you are running, make carbs your friend. It's the fuel the body needs for endurance work, far more than protein, and if you eat enough of it you shouldn't lose weight. Reward yourself after a 20 minute jog with a Cinnabon or some sweet potato fries or something like that. Seriously. When I was running in London, I used to scorf a Clif bar after a run, sometimes two, and I still dropped about 10lbs (back down to the weight I was at in high school). Eat many carbs, and good fats (eg: avocado NOM NOM NOM).