Mareus News Blog

The evolution of Team Couch

September 15th, 2012

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Hi All,

Back at the start of April I had just received the link to the NHS podcast from Cian, and was starting out on the 9 week podcast programme with excitement, trepidation and a fair bit of curiosity as to where it would take me (apart from around the local park!) 😀

So, team Couch started as two, myself and Suzie, and we dusted off our runners and took to Corkagh Park on a sunny afternoon in early April.

Week 1 consisted of a brisk 5-minute walk, then alternating 60 seconds of running and 90 seconds of walking, for a total of 20 minutes. Easy peasy eh? Well… as a person who never ran any significant distance before, the first time we tried this the 60 seconds running felt three times as long as the 90 seconds of walking! I thought I was going to throw up by the third 60 second run. Guided on by the consoling podcast lady and the smart mix of fast and slow beats on the musaak track, we persevered, focussed on the other activities in the park, and finally got to the end of the podcast, celebrating with team couch’s brand of “high 5” (i.e. we totally failed to make contact) 😀

There’s a saying in Irish “Tús maith, leath na h’oibre”, which roughly translates as a good start is half the battle… and buoyed up by completing week 1 part 1, our couch to 5k journey had some momentum and with each gradual success we continued to train 3 times a week finally reaching Week 6 part 1 in… well… a little over 7 weeks! Go us, freestyling with the podcast!

During that 7 or so weeks team couch got to know how much is actually happening up the road from us, out there, in the fresh air!

We saw cricket matches, football matches, baseball matches, other joggers, runners, walkers, dog walkers, fishers, men, women and children enjoying the open fields, pet farms, Corky the pig, squirrels stashing acorns, wedding parties being photographed, and even finished one of our evening runs to a line of grazing rabbits cheering us home (that last one might have been the joggers high, or oxygen deficit kicking in though!) Team couch was getting hooked on the outdoors, progression, and fond of our new and varied “Park Life” community!

At week 6… just after our first 20 minute run, the hardest one so far, and our biggest achievement… things ground to a halt! Supporting the boys in green in Poland, work commitments and some minor injuries saw a roadblock appear in front of Team Couch’s journey to 5K nirvana.

We stopped, we got frustrated, we waited, we missed the Park Life, and eventually after 6 weeks, we pushed down the roadblocks and got back to business… wihooooo! It was hard, but doable!

By podcast week 8, team couch had expanded to 3 people with H. joining us. We were up to 28 minutes of running, and our “team couch high 5” was getting more accurate with every session! Not to mention, H. knew of a 5K charity race coming up… so we now had a specific goal to aim for, and with the added benefit of supporting “>two great charities.

Race day was last week… our first 5K, by this stage, we even had our very own team couch coach/camera man to cheer us on and keep us motivated…it was sunny and there was a band playing, and we did it, it can be done! Give it a go! Go team couch!!!

All the best from Park West!