Chef_Beast’s BodyBlog

I’m finally achieving some significant improvement to my 5-K running time! Allright, still a pretty low pace considering, but when coming from my background of no running my whole life (maximum being about 1.5 km, obligatory in gradeschool gym class, which I would barely sustain a jog for)…. so even being able to do a 5k is pretty excellent for me! I’m really pleased that I’ve overcome all the knee pain I used to get a year ago from even 5 minutes of running. Slow, slow slow increases in speed and duration was really the key. so it’s been nearly 10 months of slowly increasing pace and length to get to this. Last week and again this week I finished 5km in 27 minutes (just a hair faster than 11km/hr).

Still a ways to go to get to my goal– I’m hoping to get to something about at 20 minutes (15 km/hr pace!!!), to be able to suprise my boyfriend on his birthday– he’s a fantasic runner and can easily complete a 5k going faster than 18km/hr, so I have a long way to go still! But he’d be incredibly happy to see that I could even run that long with him, so however fast I can get it’s worth it! (He’s also a Bodyspace user, but logs on so rarely, I bet he’ll never find me posting about my secret goals on here hahaha!)
So I’m doing 3-4 runs per week of roughly 5km, leaving a day of non-running cardio inbetween to recover all the impact to my knees (when I push the pace, I can definitely feel that I’ve pushed my knees near the limit of the impact they will endure). Even with that sensation of "pushing-it" for what my knees will take, I’m EXTREMELY happy that I’m not experiencing anything like the knee pain I would have this time last year for just running 6 minutes at 9km/hr!! The pain and inflammation in my knees was debilitating for weeks even for regular walking… Hence this progress is really exciting!!

After improving long-distances, I’ll definitely focus more intensely on improving sprints, which I also am finding a lot of fun! Wish me luck with my too-highly-set-goals! haha Let me know if you have tips for long-distance training or sprinting!