20 Minutes of Hell… A C25K Love Story

There are runners, and there are non-runners and somewhere in that monumental chasm that exists between the two, are those few of us who are attempting to bridge the gap.

We are not runners, but we are staggering and stumbling along the best we can. We are those people you see when you’re driving along the street, and you think “Oh lord, she shouldn’t be trying to do that” or “I’d better call 9-1-1; he’s not going to make it much farther.”

As I’ve noted here before, I’m using C25K (Couch to 5K) to get my run on. There are a lot of flaws in the program–which is why I’m hard at work developing a JSC25K (Jack Sh*t Couch to 5K) program–but I give it a lot of credit for getting me on the road to being a runner.

I haven’t done the research because… well, due to highly technical reasons (I’m lazy), but I suspect that Week Five, Day Three is the jumping off point for a lot of people who attempt C25K.

It asks you to run 20 minutes, thank you very much.

20 minutes.

I know you marathoners and half-marathoners are chuckling at that, but to us half- half- half- half- half- half-marathoners, twenty minutes sounds like a death sentence.

My running buddy MrsFatsss wrote a very eloquent post about her experience battling the 20-minute barrier. I was going to do something similar, but when I went back to my office and looked at my notes from immediately after completing the session, I found that it was nothing but a string of obscenities and vehement pleas for somebody to “kill me, just kill me.”

Had you told me six weeks ago that I’d be running for twenty minutes at a time, I’d have laughed in your face. Now I’m learning to love the challenge of the open road, the thrill of that last thirty seconds of running, the satisfaction of a hard task completed.

And here’s the craziest thing of all…

I was walking into my gym the other morning and there was a table set up to sign people up for an upcoming 5K race.

No, I didn’t sign up… but I did actually think about signing up for a moment, which marks a huge leap in my running narrative. Up until now, 5K race sign-ups were completely invisible to me, simply weren’t showing up on my radar. I imagine they must have been taking place, but I never actually saw it happening.

I suppose it’s like when you buy a certain kind of automobile and then suddenly start seeing that same make all over town.

I didn’t sign up for that race, but I suspect there’s a 5K somewhere in my future.

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