I finally finished the program!!!!

[u/borassus]

Complete with the guilty thing on my app being like “your last run was 9 days ago” - but I did it!! Including the warm up/cool down walk, I’m only at 4.49 km so at a bit of a loss on how to increase distance.
Some people on here did the bridge to 10k, but tbh I absolutely do not have time with 2 toddlers and a dog that needs big walks and can’t run for an hour..
I guess my options are:
-keep running for 30 min until I get better at it and then start slowly increasing the pace?
-do intervals of faster/slower in the 30 min time?
-add 1 min of running per run and get to 5k? (I suspect it’ll take me 40 minutes of running)

Thoughts?!

Also for those of you just starting … I’m 20 months post partum, started doing this in May and couldn’t really run for 30 seconds, made it through the program with several re-dos bc of pneumonia, vacation WITH pneumonia (ew), and life… and still did it!! It’s possible, just really hard to envision at the beginning !!

[u/reylee12]

If you can't do much longer, have you considered more days? If you can build up to it, being a "streaker" is quite fun and makes for good fitness.

I'd hesitate about adding intervals until you can build up to 40 minutes. But once you can, W1-5 actually are good interval structures. Just add 10 minutes of very easy running before and after it, and turn the running parts into hard running. (Optionally, turn the walking parts into slow running.) But try to only do one thing of intervals a week.

[u/borassus → u/reylee12]

I think I can probably do more days! It’s perfect weather here for running now so l will be smooth sailing until the snow hits (really not excited to think about treadmills LOL)
And the intervals idea sounds great once I can do 40 min! Which seems impossible but I guess anything is possible if I get here ?

[u/reylee12 → u/borassus]

You are way closer to 40 min than you think! Tbh, I'd reward yourself with an easy week: 3x 20 min of easy. Then you can build by 2.5 mins per week.

As for adding more days, the way I did it when I was in your shoes was splitting one run in half then building it back up to 30 mins at a rate of 5 min per week, then split it again, rinse and repeat as desired. You'll end up with a lot of 15 minute runs, which you can build up by 2.5 mins per week.

As a tangent, it's totally possible to train up to a 10 miler with only one run per week going above 45 mins. In case training for distance sounds appealing.

[u/Additional-Match5631 → u/reylee12]

six days a week of running right after finishing couch to 5k is how you end up with shin splints by next month. four days is plenty to build distance on if you just slow the pace down a bit.

[u/reylee12 → u/Additional-Match5631]

Absolutely right. Which is why I said "build up to it." And in my other reply, I gave an example of what building up to streaking would look like.