Hacking My Program

So tonight I did week 3 day 2 of c25k. Sort of. It's a little weird. In comparison to the c210k app I tried, this has me running longer intervals, though for a much shorter overall time. But week 3 is a bit weird, because rather than ending the workout with a run followed by a 5 minute cool-down, week 3 ends with a 3-minute walk, followed by a 5 minute cool-down. But tonight, I took things into my own hands. And kinda succeeded. Usually, my workouts consist of me leaving the house as I press "start." The warmup is me walking to my local running trail (conveniently about 5 minutes away). When the app tells me to run or walk, I do that. When it says "halfway," I turn around and go back the way I came. Ideally, I reach the point where I started running at the same time the app tells me to start my cool-down, and I just walk home. Tonight, I didn't want to walk then walk some more, though, so my plan was to keep running for an extra 90 seconds after the "halfway" notice, then turn around. I was then going to start running at the 90 second mark of my last "walk" interval, then cool down for the regular 5 minutes. But I screwed up my plans a bit. When I finished my extra 90 seconds after the turnaround point, I thought, "gee, if I go just another 30 or 45 seconds, I can make it to that landmark," which I knew would make my total distance about 2 miles tonight, including my warm-up and cool-down. But that extra time going out had to be doubled coming back. So even though I started running with 90 seconds left on my last walking interval, I was nowhere near where I should be if I was going to make it home in the 28 minutes allotted by the app. So I kept running well into my cool-down time, leaving myself only 3 minutes for a cool-down. When I got home I was very tired, but I did make the time I hoped for. If I don't count my warm-up or (abbreviated) cool-down, my pace was a 13:20 minute mile. Not bad, considering that I walked nearly half the time. (Not great, but not bad.) I think for my next run I'll play it straight, though. Too much thinking involved tonight.