So it appears I forgot to make a post regarding my completion of W6D3. Since it's no longer fresh in my mind, I'll post what I wrote over on the C25k thread on the RunnersWorld.com forums and follow that with a recap of last night:
I had to wait to run a lot longer than I wanted to because of the crappy weather we've been having all day but I had to run tonight or risk throwing a hard slider at my training schedule. I'll be in Orlando from Friday-Monday so I'm already planning one extra day of rest before starting W7 and I didn't want to add those three days to the gap between W6D2 & W6D3 so, no matter what, I was going out tonight.
The run started off like all the others but about 8 or 9 minutes into it, my legs randomly began to get sore. It was just normal workout aches but they started sooner than I expected them to. My stomach even decided to join in the fun by sloshing around like the town drunk so I definitely didn't feel like myself much of the run. I didn't want to curb the progress I had been making to this point by cutting the 25 minute run short and re-doing W6 next week so I kept pushing.
Eventually the aches subsided and I chugged along like normal. As I reached what I'm pretty sure was the 1.75 mile mark, though, I started to feel it again. My legs wanted me stop and at points I felt like I was dragging cement filled shoes with each step. A little bit further down the road, I slipped up and looked down at my iPhone to see how much time was left. To my surprise, the timer was at 3:27 and counting. I couldn't believe it and began to doubt my ability to finish but I told myself that I wasn't stopping until the lady told me to or my legs gave out on me. Before I knew it I was told there was 1 minute left and the workout was complete shortly after.
My pace was much slower tonight than in days past because of the aches so I only managed to cover 2.1 miles in the 25 minute period. Hopefully these rest days recharge my body and I'm back to my normal self on Monday evening when I get home.
Last night I took on W7D1. This week marks the return of weeks where the same workout is completed all 3 days. For W7, you simply carry over the final workout of W6; a 25 minute run. I felt a bit better than I did prior to W6D3 but I was running after a 3 day layoff so I wasn't expecting much. Although I wasn't inactive those three days (I walked at least 3 miles each day throughout Universal's Islands of Adventure & Disney's Epcot) the activity wasn't constant, it was spread out, so it didn't have quite the same results that running does.
However, I did notice just how much improvement there has been in my level of fitness while I was at the parks. A little over a year ago, I went to Disney with my wife. She had some issues with one of her feet and as a precaution while we waited for approval on her surgery, I pushed her around all 4 parks in a wheelchair. For those of you not familiar with the landscape at Disney, the surface is anything but level. You constantly encounter inclines and declines and people just plain don't care that someone in a wheelchair is near them so your reflexes are tested regularly.
Last year, my legs were sore at the end of each day. This year, though, it felt like I barely covered any distance. The only reason I was even tired was because of the amount of sun I had been getting. Although my wife only needed a wheelchair at Epcot (her foot swelled up a bit after Universal), I couldn't help but see how much easier the walking was thanks to the exercise I've had over the course of the last 6 weeks.
As for the run itself, it went pretty well. I had some random aches in my knees and my lower thighs but nothing major and my breathing was better since, for the most part, I felt relatively normal. I was able to increase my pace a bit here and there but managed to cover the same distance because I took things a little bit easier during my warmup walk since I felt like I rushed it a bit too much last time. I've got a crazy schedule ahead of me, 9 straight days of work counting today, but I'll be taking care of business on the asphalt regardless.
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