Douglas Ireland

Tag: c25k

  • From Couch to 10K: My Year-Long Journey to Paisley 10K

    Soundtrack to this post.

    I’m 46, currently working through Couch to 5K (week 6), and I’ve just set myself a proper goal: run the Paisley 10K next year in under 50 minutes.

    Where I’m starting from

    Let’s be honest about the baseline. My most recent run was 4.64 km in 32 minutes 58 seconds, a pace of roughly 7:06 per km. Eight years ago I ran a parkrun 5K in 23 minutes, so I know there’s another gear in there somewhere. It’s just been a while.

    This year’s Paisley 10K is only a couple of weeks away, which is clearly too soon. But next year? That feels like a target worth training for properly.

    Elite marathon runners including Mo Farah competing in the 2010 Bupa London 10K road race
    Elite runners at the 2010 Bupa London 10K, the kind of pace I’m chasing over the next year.
    Photo by Julian Mason, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 2.0

    The goal

    50 minutes for 10K means averaging 5:00 per km. Compared to where I am right now, that’s ambitious. Compared to my parkrun pace from 8 years ago (4:36/km), it’s realistic. Somewhere between “achievable” and “will require actual work,” which is exactly where a good goal should sit.

    The plan

    Rather than just wing it, I’ve broken the year into six phases:

    Phase 1, Finish C25K (weeks 1–3): Complete the programme as designed, finishing with a continuous 30-minute 5K.

    Phase 2, 5K consolidation (weeks 4–10): Three runs a week, easy, tempo, and long, plus fortnightly interval sessions. Goal: bring the 5K down to around 26–27 minutes.

    Phase 3, Build to 10K (weeks 11–20): Shift focus to distance using a bridge programme, growing the long run from 5K toward 8–9K, increasing no more than about 10% a week.

    Phase 4, 10K-specific training (weeks 21–36): Four runs a week, with tempo runs tightening toward 5:00/km pace and intervals like 5×1km at 4:45–4:50/km. Long run builds to 12K.

    Phase 5, Peak and taper (weeks 37–44): Race-pace intervals, a long run peaking at 12–14K, then a two-week taper.

    Phase 6, Race week: Easy runs or rest, then race day.

    Checking in along the way

    The plan includes a built-in reality check around month six or seven: if my 5K pace isn’t approaching 4:45–4:50/km by then, 50 minutes might need to shift from “the goal” to “the stretch goal.” Better to know that with months to adjust than to find out in the final week.

    Why write this down publicly

    Partly accountability. It’s harder to quietly let a goal slide when it’s sitting on the internet with your name on it. Partly because I know I’m not the only person starting from a C25K app and wondering if a 10K is really possible in a year. It is. It just takes patience and a plan.

    I’ll post updates as I move through each phase, starting with finishing C25K in the next few weeks.

  • I’ll start tomorrow

    Soundtrack to this post.

    About four months ago I was diagnosed with MS. I’m not going to write a big dramatic post about that part, not today anyway, but I’ll be honest about what it did to me in the short term. There was a bit of depression in there, the kind you don’t always admit to at the time, and I dealt with it the way a lot of people do. I ate. Chocolate mostly. Chocolate has always been my vice and for a few weeks it was more or less a food group.

    The problem is that I also have type 2 diabetes, so emotionally eating my way through bars of chocolate was about the worst thing I could be doing, MS or no MS. And I knew it. I knew I needed to eat better and move more. Every single day I told myself the same thing: I’ll start tomorrow. Tomorrow is a very comfortable place to keep your good intentions. Nothing ever actually has to happen there.

    Then about three weeks ago something just snapped in my head. I can’t point to a single moment or some big realisation. I just woke up done with waiting for tomorrow. I started counting my calories that same day and I joined the gym.

    If you’ve read this blog for any length of time you’ll know I care a lot about privacy, and about choosing what data I hand over to whom. So the obvious tools were out. I wasn’t about to feed every meal into MyFitnessPal or every run into Strava and let them quietly build a picture of my body and my habits. That’s just not for me.

    What I could do was self-host. I set up SparkyFitness for logging my food, which does much the same job as MyFitnessPal but on my own server with my own data staying mine. And I built myself a simple training log for the exercise side. I genuinely enjoyed building it, which is half the appeal. Both have public diaries if you fancy following along:

    [Edit: 20/07/2026] I wasn’t getting on with SparkyFitness. It was quite hard to use on mobile, hard to see, and had loads of features I didn’t use while missing some I wanted. So I made my own version that does exactly what I want with no bloat, called Nourish. The food log and training log are now merged into one at nourish.douglasireland.com/public/douglas-ireland. If you fancy trying Nourish and giving me feedback, it’s at nourish.douglasireland.com.

    On the running side I’ve started Couch to 5K again. If you’ve not come across it, it’s a beginners’ running plan (the NHS version is the one most people in the UK use) that eases you from not running at all up to running 5k. Three sessions a week over nine weeks, starting with short bursts of running in between walking and building up from there. I’m on week 3 as of today.

    To run the plan I use an app called Just Run, which I found on F-Droid. It fits the same rule as everything else here: no ads, no account, no tracking, just a timer that tells you when to run and when to walk. It’s made by a small developer called Jupli and it’s exactly the sort of quiet, does-one-thing-well app I like to give a shout to, so if you’re starting C25K yourself it’s well worth a look.

    Alongside the running I’m keeping my food to around 1800 calories a day.

    I won’t pretend three weeks is long enough to call anything a transformation. But I can honestly say I already feel amazing. Better than I have in a long time, and better than I expected to this soon. Ten years ago I could run a 5k in 23 minutes and I was sitting at a 22.4 BMI. That’s the version of me I’m aiming to get back to. Not to prove anything to anyone, just because I felt good back then and I’d like to feel that way again, MS and diabetes and all.

    If you want to keep an eye on how it’s going, the diaries above update as I do. No login, no tracking, just the numbers.

  • Running, Stopping, and Starting Again.

    Soundtrack to this post.

    I’ve completed the Couch to 5K programme twice before. It’s not magic, but it works. Each time I finished, I felt quietly pleased with myself. I’d reached a point where running 5 kilometres in around half an hour was comfortable. Not easy, exactly, but doable.

    I enjoyed it, too. Or at least, I enjoyed the feeling afterwards. A clear head, lungs awake, the simple satisfaction of having moved my body for half an hour. And yet, both times, gradually and predictably, my trainers ended up back in the cupboard. Days between runs turned into weeks. Motivation faded, routines slipped.

    I’m not running right now because of a back injury. But I’m hoping I’ll start again soon. My aim is simple: run 5K in about 30 minutes, three times a week. The NHS recommends at least 30 minutes of vigorous activity weekly, enough to break a sweat and get properly out of breath, and this ticks that box neatly.

    For anyone unfamiliar, the Couch to 5K (often shortened to C25K) is straightforward. You run three times each week, for nine weeks. Early on, it’s mostly walking, with short bursts of jogging. Over time, the jogging bits get longer, and the walks shorter, until you’re running continuously for half an hour or so. It’s structured, manageable, and it doesn’t assume you’re already fit.

    I’ve never struggled with completing the programme itself. It’s after finishing, once I’ve proven to myself that I can do it, that the difficulty begins. Without a schedule nudging me forward, I slip quietly back into the old routines of not running at all. Maybe the issue is that I think of myself as having ‘finished’ something. Perhaps running isn’t something that can be finished. It’s more of an ongoing conversation between motivation and habit, between intention and routine.

    This time, I wonder if acknowledging this up front might help. There’s no great secret to staying motivated. It’s probably about quiet acceptance that some days I won’t want to run at all. But maybe running anyway, gently defying the urge to stop, will help me find a sustainable rhythm.

    For now, my shoes are waiting. Soon enough, I hope, I’ll be lacing them up again.