Sometimes you have to ask yourself "How did I get here?"

The long road to here
So, here we are again.  A lot of time has past, and I'm still in the same shape.  Doc says this is it, either I loose fifty pounds by the end of the year, or I've got to start taking insulin.  

The Treadmill-o-doom has seen better days.  If I cannot find a new belt for it, it's going to need to be permanently retired.

So, a couple of months ago, I broke down and joined Planet Fitness.  I have done SOME work on their treadmills, they're not horrible, just not what I like.  I have also been working with their "trainer", and we have a workout plan for me that I've also been working on.

So far, I've lost some weight.  It's now time to really get a plan into effect.

Couch to 5K - All over again
C25K - W1D1 - It was ugly.

I few weeks ago, I did a few test runs.  I'm not going to lie.  At this weight, it hurts.  I'm still heavier than I was when I first started the C25K program back in 2011!  

Tonight was a true training plan start of actually starting C25K, again.  I can tell that I'm going to be on week one of the plan for two, maybe three weeks.  I wasn't able to complete half of the run segments tonight.

During my test runs a couple of weeks back, I found that the app I had used for C25k many times over was finally done for.  The app is still available on the Apple app store, but it's not been updated for over 3 years.  It is broken.  Music doesn't work at all in it any more.  The intervals still go, but trying to get music to cooperate is just a deal killer.

So, I'm trying out new apps.  One of the apps claiming to be "official", the Active app.  I also have another app in the queue to try that is also calling itself "official".  Finally, I also have one more app called Intervals Pro that I'm going to try.  Of all of them, I think Intervals Pro may be the one I end up with.  It seems to be closer to other apps I've used in the past, that allowed me to create custom intervals.

The big change from just doing C25K, is that I'm now mixing in the fitness workouts too.  It's going to be the best way to make that goal by the end of the year.

A salute to Josh Clark

You may be asking yourself, "Who is Josh Clark?"  Well, hes the person that invented the Couch to 5k program back in 1996.  

He ran a website named Kick Sports.  You can still find good remnants of it on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine (linked above).  I used a lot of the articles he originally wrote back then.  Kick Sports eventually merged with Cool Running and Josh Sold his interests off in the early 2000's.

There is also an article written by him called "HOW JOSH CLARK INVENTED “COUCH TO 5K” AND HELPED MILLIONS START RUNNING"

It was fun to go to the old site and be able to see the original instructions for the C25K program.  Those instructions are no longer on the Cool Running website, since Active took it over.

Week One

Same workout for all three days: 

Do a brisk five-minute warmup walk.

Distance option: Alternate jogging and walking every 100 yards for one mile (that's sixteen 100-yard segments, or eight each of walking and jogging). Walking segments should be brisk.

Time option: Alternate jogging and walking, with 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking. Do this for a total of 20 minutes.

The original instructions for week one.  We will see how C25K-W1D2 goes on Thursday.  

As always, thanks for reading!
Regards, ~Kipp