Week 5 Run 2

2 sets of 8 minutes with 5 min walk in between. The breathing wasn't so good today; I'm thinking it was a combination of hayfever and humidity. London air is pretty intolerable when it's humid , and I hope it's not going to be that sort of summer.

Personally I'm up for a bit of bank holiday weekend rain to clear all the mugginess away, leaving a nice fresh day for our 20-minute odyssey on Monday. I'm looking forward to it but a little scared. 8 minutes felt fairly easy today but it doesn't take a statistician to know that 20 is a lot more than 8. I hope I can do it, I want to do it and if I do, it will be fuelled by willpower and rewarded with cake.

Week 5 Run 1

Sunday runs are often alone, as Kirsty, Mark and I live nowhere near each other. But Kirsty came to Battersea today, which was a good thing as it was our next step up into week 5. Actually, it's a whole week of steps up. Not to question the wisdom of the god of Couch to 5k, but doing a 20 minute continuous run at the end of this week is massive. We've decided to subvert it a bit as we are both away for the weekend and want to do that together. We'll have a go at the 20 minutes on Bank Holiday Monday, then head to a suitable pub or something as a reward for what feels like a huge milestone.

Anyway the run today was good - 3 sets of 5 minutes. Still really enjoying not fighting for breath, and I was even able to talk a little as I ran. My legs felt heavy and achey, but my body should know by now that trifling things like that are not going to stop me. We're repeating this run on Tuesday as we aim for the 20 minuter on May 3rd.

Week 4, run 3

Finally got to the GP yesterday and picked up a shiny new blue Salamol inhaler (that's Ventolin to commoners like me.) Took 2 puffs before running, as directed, and oh-my-god. What a difference! No wheezing at all. I am struggling to describe how good it felt not to wheeze and fight for breath. That just leaves the hayfever symptoms to sort out, and I'll be all set. The hayfever is a minor problem though; now I'm not wheezing I feel unbeatable!

The run went well. Legs were achey, but that is to be expected - after all, I am making them do things they've never done before, and don't really want to do now. The run pattern is still 3-5-3-5. That first 3 is by far the hardest. The second 3 feels easy after the 5, and I was surprised when Kirsty said to walk. With that and the breathing, it feels like turning a bit of a corner. I know there is lots of hard work ahead though.

We've been running along the Embankment which has fewer tourists milling about, and lots of runners. I couldn't help smiling at the sight of the London Eye, the Houses of Parliament, and all the other stuff which makes me feel lucky to live in London.

Villains

In a very modest and unspectacular way, my little running challenge has all of the elements of a traditional sports film. Determination, an underdog, adversity, breakthroughs and and a number of girls in tight running vests (not including me!). The thing it doesn't have is a villain. The reactions of people I talk to about this range from mildly interested to surprised to very supportive. No-one has openly scorned or questioned my ability to do this, although I'm sure some of them are thinking it. The worst reaction I've had was an eyebrow raised in scepticism, quickly corrected.

That's where the Americans go wrong when they use middle-class English people for their movie villains. English people are rarely openly nasty or negative. They don't shout 'Pah! I scorn you, lazy fat person - you'll NEVER run 13 miles! Mwahahaha!'. They wish you luck while their mind quietly dismisses your chances, to be discussed with mutual acquaintances at a more polite and appropriate time. Maybe. So I don't have a villain and it seems unfair to focus on that eyebrow to give me the 'screw you' sort of motivation that sports films depict. I'm sure I can live without it. What would be much more useful is one of those 80s-style montages where all the hard training is done in about 30 seconds. That would be sweet.

Week 4 run 2

Best run yet. I did the whole 16 minutes. The breathing was pretty good; a bit of wheezing but it was more bothersome than preventative. Which was great. It was my first run with Kirsty in more than a week and her presence made a big difference, and she said the same. We don't push each other or shout fitness slogans, we just run. The simple presence of the other person makes it impossible to stop short unless something is really wrong. We both felt undaunted by the impending steps up in Week 5, and for the first time I felt like maybe I can improve enough to be able to do this thing.

WEEK FOUR, PEOPLE

On my 6th week of running, I began Couch to 5k week 4. 3 minutes run, 1.5 walk, 5 run, 2.5 walk. Lather, rinse and repeat. I failed quite miserably. I made the mistake of roller skating a lot the day before. My legs were tired and I was accustomed to not pushing myself to run. I managed to run 10 minutes out of the mandated 16, and decided not to be too hard on myself because that was still the most I had ever run.

Battersea Park is a great place to run. Flat, circular and chock full of Battersea sporties, who seem generally nice; some of them smile at me as I chug in the opposite direction. Lots of hotties too. But not so many that there is a lack of space. Running in St James' Park, as we have been doing after work, has gotten prgressively more annoying as the tourists and locals take advantage of the weather. I understand both sides of this antagonism; tourists are slow and chilled and want to take pictures of ducks, but damn! There's a crazy smug jogger in the frame. We live in a world of deletable digital pictures people, I'm not going to run around every cute couple or giant family posing in front of the lake.

TMI?

As I've said before, my plan to not tell the world and his wife about the running was doomed from the start. So lots and lots of people (relatively) ask how it's going. So I tell them. 'Awful', 'Really hard', 'Not great' are phrases that have come up quite a lot. And of course this requires explanation as the natural conclusion of such whines is that I'm chubby and unfit; of course it's hard. Whilst this is true, it's not the full story. I would whine much less if I could breathe as well as your average unfit lardass.

It's like this: ashtma makes all the tiny expandable pockets in your lungs less expandy. They get all uptight; smaller. Need more air? Screw you, we're staying tight and you know what, we may even get smaller. Then the lungs handily throw in some phlegm. This gets tiring when you are breathing more.

So when people ask me how the running is going, I try to convey some sense of this and I see that people don't really know what to say. It's probably too much information but I am not one for bland answers for the sake of polite chat. You ask, you shall know. Sporties tend to bring out general exercising mantras, that it will get easier and I will improve etc. Bless them. I appreciate the advice and general supportiveness, and the mantras generally have truth to them. Maybe some day I'll come across an asthmatic sporty, and they will have a specialised mantra just for the wheezies.

Weeks 2, 3 and 3

Bad blogger!

My breathing problems continued for more than 2 weeks, but I chose to keep going and do what I could. What I could was generally running in 1.5 - 2 minute stints, then walking a lot until I finished coughing, spluttering and wheezing. It got pretty depressing and was part of the reason I stopped writing. I was frustrated that I couldn't get the asthma pump that I need, and concerned that I wasn't going to be able to do this.

I did 2 extra week 2 runs, and then 5 week 3 runs - alternating running 1.5 and 3 minutes. They became slowly, gradually easier but never easy. Always struggling to breathe and unable to talk. But the breathing started to improve and on Friday 16th I completed my last week 3.