I've been dreading this week of the C25K program for a while now.

The plan I chose was "The Proven 13-Week Walk/Run Program" from "The Beginning Runner's Handbook" by Ian MacNeill. A friend suggested it, and I liked it because it really is a very slow ramp-up to running in the beginning, which my rather large, inactive booty needed for there even to be a remote possibility for success.

Case in point: Week 6 is the first week where you actually run more than you walk.

In Week 6, you "run 3 minutes, walk 2 minutes" 10-13 times, depending on the training day. I've been scared out of my mind about this week because even though each running segment is only :30 longer than Week 5's, there was something about the idea of running more than I walked that seemed really hard.

And it isn't just the extra running time -- I was also worried about the reduction in recovery time. I'm gasping like a fish most of the time I'm on the track, feeling like I need every second of not-running to make it through the running part. In Week 6, not only do you gain :30 of running each segment, you lose :30 of recovery time each segment.

My first attempt at Week 6 was Monday's unmitigated disaster on the treadmill (stupid rain)! I couldn't find my pace and I got really sweaty being inside and then I got bored just staring at the wall, so I quit a full 23 minutes before I was supposed to.

Happily, the rain moved out of town leaving this AM clear for me to hit the track!

I'm happy to say, that I totally survived Week 6, Day 2 this morning! I ran more than I walked AND my time jumped from a 19-minute mile to a (wait for it...) 15-minute mile! Holy smokes!

(Honestly, I really don't know how that happened and I suspect it may be due to miscounting a lap or maybe even two because the time improvement seems somewhat improbable, but for the time being, whatevs, I'll take it!)

So, yay! I did it!

Now I just gotta worry about the horror that is Week 10? 11? -- where you have to run 20 minutes, walk for, like, a minute and then run ANOTHER 20 minutes. And if I remember right, there's no ramp-up. You go from running 8 minutes at a time to the 20 minute mess. I dunno. Maybe once you can run 8 minutes straight, it's not that much of a stretch to run 20?

Either way, I'm happy today, and I'll worry about future weeks some other time!