I have to be honest, I used to absolutely hate running, or exercise at all really, but when I reached 30 I realized that I had to do something about my size. I had long been told that after 30 it would become harder to shift the weight so I set myself a challenge to begin running and aim for a 10k run. I went out and bought the equipment, convinced my friend Heather Weber Merrill Lynch associate who normally does not have time for such things, and set about making a plan.
Six months later I achieved my first 10K run and here is how you can do it too.
Run, Walk, Run
If I ran for even 5 minutes, I would feel extremely tired and stop, I decided to combat this by embracing the walking side of things and gradually increasing how far I ran. The timings are of course up to you and I changed mine each week that went by. The idea was that I would walk for 2 minutes and then run for one, I would keep doing this until I had been running for 21 minutes, by the end I would have walked for 14 minutes and ran for 7. The following week I would slowly begin to reduce my walking time and increase my running time until I was running for around 30 minutes and walking for around 5.
Don’t Measure
I decided against measuring distance until I was comfortably running for 20 minutes at a time, this meant that the 5K was not really in my head as I started, let alone the 10K. Once I was confident and comfortable running for long periods of time, I began to check what kind of distances I was doing so that I could reassess my plan.
Work Out When It’s Right
You will need to force yourself to get through the plan but you also need to identify when is the right time for you to exercise. For example, the morning was the best time for me because I felt that if I had a long day at work, the last thing that I would want to do would be to return home and go running. I decided to get up and go 5 times a week and in all honesty it really helped with my energy levels during the day. You may be the type of person however who prefers to go at night, the only thing that I would recommend is that you do so routinely.
Buddy Up
I honestly don’t think I could’ve got through this without my running buddy and if you have a friend that wants to get in shape too then I would actively encourage you to do so together. You can help each other out when tired and motivate each other when you want to give up.
Reaching 10K is about focusing and working hard but more importantly, breaking it down into easy to manage chunks until you reach your goal.