How to Run a 5K

Joe Justice here helping you improve your health and fitness one short video at a time. One of the big things that I’ve done over the last couple of years to really improve my fitness has been adding a 5K run to my regular routine.

I run about 5K every day. Now, I’m not a naturally good runner. I’m actually a really terrible, horrible runner. I hate every second of it. I’m not one of these people that talks about getting the runner’s high and being out in nature and just drifting away and all that.

Every second of running is something that I don’t enjoy. So I had to develop a system to help me to be able to to do running and to be able to consistently run and run at a certain pace and everything. So I was hoping to share that system with you, and hopefully it’ll inspire some people along the way to improve their health, adding a little bit of running into their routine.

So the system is actually pretty simple. What you want to do is pick a beginning target, say a mile, and you take that distance of a mile and you’re going to run that distance for as long as you can. Once you get to the point where you just can’t run it anymore, then you record that number, say it’s a quarter of a mile, half a mile.

It doesn’t matter. You can also use landmarks. So you run to a certain sign or you run to a certain location, something like that. I use my watch. I like to use my watch to record my distances. And that way, I know exactly where I’m at using GPS.

So then your goal of the system is to improve that distance a little bit more every time you run. So if you run every day, you want to at least hit that number every day. If you run every other day, you want to try and do a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. And over time, you’re going to want to stretch that out and stretch it out until you finally get to a mile once you get to a mile. Then the next step is to do, say, two miles and do the exact same thing you’re going to run for as far as you can record it, find landmarks, find something to keep track of. Don’t worry about your time. Time will all come later. Just focus on getting that run in for that distance until you can build all the way up to a full 5K run.

And then once you can build up to four or 5K run, then you can start worrying about things like improving your pace and things like that using interval training. And that’s all. Way more advanced topics. So a couple of things to improve your motivation.

First of all, you got to be outside, getting the fresh air, getting the breeze on your face seeing nature, seeing grass running past other people, seeing other people enjoying the same activities. That’s that’s great. And it just kills the treadmill. Treadmills just zap all of your energy. So if it’s at all possible, find a nice flat running surface or even better, maybe you could do some trail running. Try to do something through the woods or something like that, but get outside and be outside.

Next is to embrace the suck. Here’s the thing. If you’re using this method where you’re adding a little bit on every time you’re adding and adding and adding, and it’s always going to be hard. There’s never a point where it’s going to feel easy because you’re progressively building up the challenge.

Now, if you were to back down at a certain point that what you used to do six weeks ago, that would feel easy to you. But since you’re adding a little bit every time, that means it’s always going to feel equally hard.

And that’s that’s just part of this type of progressive overload. You have to embrace it. You have to embrace the suck. And even more to that point and more to embracing the suck is understanding that if you hate it, if every step is miserable, then don’t waste it.

OK. If you dog it, if you’re taking it easy, if you’re not pushing yourself very hard, then you’re not getting any benefits and you hate it. So which one do you want to do? Do you want to not get any benefits and hate it, or do you want to hate it and at least get the benefits?

So if you want to hate it, you don’t have a choice on that one. You’re going to hate it. So you might as well get the benefits. And that means to push yourself to embrace the suck and to know that the more you hate it, the harder it is, the more it’s improving your health.

So put those into play. Let me know how that works out for you and let me know what you do to motivate yourself for all your different fitness goals. Until next time, I’ll talk to you later. Bye bye.