improvement in simplicity of my morning run

Last night I came home to find, in my mailbox, a teeny tiny book that fits in the palm of my hand, called the "Complete Book of Running."  A surprise gift from a great friend!  I read it, cover-to-cover, as soon as I got to my room.  YES I am an "instant gratification" girl!  LOL


Here's a cool thing:  it has a plan similar to the C25K plan, only simpler.  The plan I've been working for the last little while had me, for week 4, doing the following:


Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then:

• Jog 1/4 mile (or 3 minutes)
• Walk 1/8 mile (or 90 seconds)
• Jog 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes)
• Walk 1/4 mile (or 2-1/2 minutes)
• Jog 1/4 mile (or 3 minutes)
• Walk 1/8 mile (or 90 seconds)
• Jog 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes)

Which is all very well and good, quite manageable EXCEPT that at 5:30 in the morning, this brain struggles SOOOOO much to keep track of where I am on the rotation and what is next.  It's not hard, it's just that I'm really not bright when I first wake up (which you've probably guessed, based on the amount of editing errors in these early morning blogs - I am frequently later horrified when I read my morning blogs with a more coherent brain!)


The plan in the teeny tiny book for week 4 looks like:



Run 7 minutes, walk 3 minutes.  Complete 3 cycles.


Muuuuuuuuch easier for my morning brain to process.  And the plan gets me to running continuously for 30 minutes within 10 weeks, as compared to 9 weeks for the C25K plan, so I made the switch this morning.  The cycles in the weeks ahead continue to be much simpler in the tiny book than on the C25K plan.  And really in the big picture they are not that different at all!