Sunday 19 February 2017

Couch to 5K



Good morning and bonjour!

Don’t really know how any of this happened, but here I am starting something that lasts nine weeks.  Quite a slice of commitment for someone who’s cut out alcohol and hasn’t had a drink for three days, four hours and sixteen minutes.

I came across the Couch to 5k site and I’m actually going to do some running.

Last time I did some running I went straight for the burn and ended up with shin splints and a twisted ankle.  This time I’m doing it carefully.

So, how’s it going? 


Week One 13.2.17
Steps 2994  km 2.32  cal. 215  time 24m


Timing a little skimpy.  One minute short for some reason.  But first run completed.  I’m using my garden, which is not big enough, but is private.  Five minutes fast walking followed by 60 seconds running and 90 seconds fast walking for twenty minutes.

I have proper shoes and a hair band.  Couldn’t find my sports leggings, so I’m wearing loose jeans with a belt to keep them up.

How do I feel?

A little smug, not much fitter yet, no racing heart or terminal asthma. Happy to be on top of the challenge.




Week one 15.2.17
Steps 3102  km 2.44  cal. 228  time 25m


Breakfast with Arnold Bennet, in bed.  V. decadent.  Husband beginning first read of my new DCI Alice Candy story.  Trade off is toast and coffee brought to him, oh, and his glasses.  Wouldn’t let me take a pic.

Sunny outside but dew has made my feet wet.  Had music this time – much better.  Started off with Flock of Seagulls, trying not to think of The Slaughter of the Lambs.  On to Abba – beautiful but fairly depressing nostalgia.  What can a person who grew up with the 80s do?

Still on the 60 secs running, 90 secs walking.  Not enough time to get into it, but the reason I’m doing this by degrees is to avoid injury.  I have to remember.  No going for it.  Not yet.

Only problem today, apart from the wet feet, was my almost irresistible desire to sing along with Super Trouper.  In a small French village, with the mayor and his chickens living next door on the other side of my garden wall, who knows what the consequences might be.  Watch this space.

Pleased with myself.



Week one 17.2.17
Steps 3106  km 2.46  cal. 230  time 25m


Woke up to summer mist.  Bacon sandwich tasted brilliant – had to be done because the fridge freezer is  in danger of collapse and so an eating frenzy of perishables is inevitable – what’s that you say? Bacon keeps?  I say, No it doesn’t.  Not in our house.  So, to be specific, we have freezer power, but the fridge is warming up nicely. 

Not yet poisoned, I made another search for my lycra leggings and found them this time in a bag of summer clothes.  Persistence pays off.

Forgetting to do the warm up yet again, I begin with the five-minute fast walking around the garden then launch into the 60 sec. Running, 90 sec walking regime for twenty minutes in the knowledge that the next time I challenge myself the timings will be reversed.  I feel I am ready for the next stage.

I determined at the start (for no particular reason) that I would not skip any songs on my MP3.  Listening to Abba still (they made a lot of songs, didn’t they?) I’m taken by the simplicity of the lyrics and also by trying to work out which of the girls is singing which tunes.  I thought I knew, but now I’m not so sure.  Not that it matters. 

As I lumber round the garden (my husband’s words), I decide it would be fun to write a series of quick reads, each with the title of an Abba song.  I listen to the lyrics of Take a Chance on Me and decide that I would rather stick needles in my eyes than build a plot around such a door mat of a protagonist.  Harsh, but true.  Sorry, Abba ladies.

Passing by the early snails, I have a moment of  clarity. Abba blares on. Resolute and coolly superior, I decide that I should probably get on with one of the five or six started but not finished works in progress on my laptop, instead of wandering off the beaten track, as it were, in search of popular cliché and unrealistic romance (after all, who wants to make money writing?) – I also decide I want to travel the world, learn to sing, and fix the fridge myself.

It’s truly summer-like when I finish running. The mist has floated away. As I walk back to the house, passing pretty spring flowers and noticing that my trainers have turned green with grass cuttings, Idle Billy (as I like to call him), is singing about his rendez-vous with a little dancer, who apparently came dancing to his door and proceeded to kick up a hell of a racket.  I pause Billy in mid more, more, more chorus, leaving him on tenterhooks until my next run.


No injuries, aches or pains.  Just a casual kind of smugness and a feeling of limbering up for the next level.

Next week I’ll sort out some pics.  A bientôt.

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