Hey team, another video in my series about the Couch to 5K programme.
Another little thing that I’ve noticed with the BBC NHS programme is the fact that it doesn’t have any recovery or download weeks.
Now, I understand because you want to be able to say, “Oh, it’s an eight-week programme, and it’ll get you to your 5K.”
However, it can be a bit tricky for people because each week is getting more and more challenging from the last, and it goes on for eight or nine weeks.
Normally, I’d have put at least one, probably two, recovery or download weeks into somebody’s programme if I was training them over that length of time.
What is a recovery or download week?
So firstly, what is a recovery or download week?
It’s basically when we drop down the amount of running you’re doing.
If I’m training somebody maybe for a half or a full marathon, that might be dropping down the total amount of distance that they do, maybe taking some of the pace out, just dropping the overall load a little bit so they get a bit of a chance every few weeks. It might be every three, four, five weeks. It might vary a little bit depending on the runner, for their body to do a bit more recovery and a bit more adaptation.
So it helps us get fitter over the medium to longer term to have these recovery or download weeks in.
Does Couch to 5K need a recovery week?
And yeah, the Couch to 5K programme, off the shelf, doesn’t have them. And for a lot of people, that’s absolutely fine, but for some people, it isn’t.
Some people really value and appreciate and benefit from having one or two download or recovery weeks in that programme.
So I guess it’s first almost to say that out loud to give permission that if you’re getting to a certain point, maybe three weeks in, six weeks in, or whatever to the Couch to 5K programme, you’re going, “Phew, this is getting a bit much. Don’t feel, feel a bit tired now. Maybe not feeling like I’m fully recovered from one session to the next.”
Just take a little download week.
How to add a recovery week to Couch to 5K
So say, for example, you’ve done weeks one, two and three of the Couch to 5K programme, and you’re like, “Okay, feeling like I’m a bit tired now.”
Maybe just go back and repeat week one, and then after you’ve done that, go straight on to week four.
So you end up doing week four on effectively week five of your calendar weeks. But you’ve just given yourself a week where you’re not stopping training, you’ve just dropped it back a little bit, give the body a little bit of time to recover, to adapt, and then crack on with the next one.
Or an option is to get in touch with a wonderful running coach, and they can help guide you through the process completely bespoke to you.
Hope that’s useful.
Happy running.
