C25K Week 2: "Music, Maestro!"

Following my initial pottering around the block, I started trying to get in place the mental and physical techniques to try and assist me on the programme.

First things first: a suitable soundtrack. I’d managed to download a few songs from the Xena albums which seemed appropriate enough and suitably stirring. It also proved rather appropriate once I hooked it up to my C25K app and the first track title that came up was “The Way of Pain.” Sounds hopeful!

The main tracks that are helping at this stage are the main title theme and the "Warrior Princess" track. These are suitably stirring tracks for the short 3 minute runs I am doing at this stage and about the right length at 2.5 minutes a piece. I also use "Warrior Princess" as my alarm so I get that same burst of adrenaline to help me wake up in the morning! All in all the music I listen to is making a huge difference to my determinism while running, but it does lead to some technical issues:-

Of course once again huge portions of the first lap were eaten up by me trying to stuff my phone into various pockets having forgotten that it must live down my cleavage so as not to wind up committing suicide. This led to a somewhat ‘Edina Monsoon’ style calamitous first day ('Ab Fab', sitcom clip below) and I ended up doing about twice the normal distance as every time my phone fell out and switched off it was easier to just start again (because C25K doesn’t appear to have a fast forward feature).

This also put an end to my original plan of running past my old school where I was written off from PE as a no-hoper and got sent to the back of the line with the asthmatics and the kids with a note from Mum. But after a while I began to get the hang of running with a tad more dignity and less chaos.

By the end of week two I’m starting to feel like a little less of a fraud, and look like a little less of an idiot. Although running onto a sheet of ice early one morning wasn’t the most calm and focusing experience of the programme so far...