If you are wondering what to do after Couch to 5K or Runningversity’s “Running For Beginners” course, then you can use this check-list to help set your goals and plan your future running journey, so you have more fun, go further, get faster and fitter.
- Celebrate and reward your achievement
- Tell your friends, to inspire them
- What if I didn’t reach 5K in the thirty minutes?
- Continue your running journey and Set your running goals
- Change the way you train – C25K sets poor expectations
- Sign up to a 5K race or parkrun
- Join a running club or group. Or start your own!
- Go further each week
- Get faster
- Follow a 10K Running Plan
Celebrate and reward your achievement
Completing something like Running For Beginners, or Couch To 5K gives you an amazing feeling of accomplishment. To run for thirty minutes non-stop is something most people will never achieve. If you’ve already finished, give yourself a celebratory pat on the back and reward yourself! Perhaps get another pair of running shoes or a new running top for whatever season you are in now. If you are still progressing through the plan, get ready to celebrate by choosing how you will reward yourself.
Tell your friends, to inspire them
The next thing to do after you finish the Couch to 5K is to tell all your friends. You might inspire some of them to do what you’ve done. Tell them how much fun you had, what bits were easy, what bits were hard, why you started in the first place and most importantly, how amazing you are feeling now!
What if I didn’t reach 5K in the thirty minutes?
The Couch To 5K is poorly named. Many new runners believe they will reach 5K by the final week, but in reality, most do not! It should really be called Couch To Thirty Minutes, but that’s not as catchy….. The good news is that most people will get to 5K shortly afterwards in the following weeks. If you can run 4K in thirty minutes, it won’t be long before you can run 5K in 37 minutes. Keep training sensibly and you’ll get there! And with ongoing training, you’ll eventually be able to run 5K in thirty minutes.
Continue your running journey
What to do after Couch To 5K is to continue your running journey. The C25K is just the start! Many people finish the plan and then just give up running. Sometimes they repeat the plan a few months later, constantly yo-yoing between running and not running. Why is this and how do YOU avoid it?
The main reason people stop running after couch to 5K is that they didn’t set any ongoing running goals, mainly because they didn’t read this article to help them plan what to do next! Once you know what to do after C25K, you are all set for a lifetime of running. So let’s set some goals now so you can continue to enjoy running, because if you are enjoying it, you’ll be more likely to do it regularly – long term consistency is key to going further, getting faster and fitter.
Set your running goals
If you work out your running goals, and write them down, it will become clear what to do after Couch To 5K. Your goals can be split into short, medium and long term goals. Short term is like “Next week, I’ll do four runs”. Medium term is like “In two months, I’ll enter a 5K race”. If you are struggling with the long term goal, this article will give you a few ideas, but it could even be something as simple as “I want to be running five times a week, injury free and enjoying it, in a year’s time”. Some of you will already have a more defined goal like “I want to do a marathon in two years time, running the whole way and finishing strong”, or “I want to start my own running group, because there isn’t one in my area”.
Setting your goals can be a bit easier if you already know WHY you are running.
If you started the Couch to 5K as part of a weight management plan including the kitchen-side of things, you will have no doubt found it easier to run once you’d lost a kilo or two. Losing a lot of weight while running needs to be a very long term plan because you need to focus on getting enough nutrients into your body so that it can repair itself from the rigours of running, and prepare to fuel properly for the next run. Eat to run, NOT run to eat!
If you started running to get some time to yourself, perhaps for mental health, then again you’ll find the benefits come gradually and steadily. However, you should probably also plan for adding in some other activities in the short to medium term, such as mountain biking, swimming or Pilates, just in case you ever get injured and thus have something to fall back on to keep you sane while recovering from the injury!
If you started running as a challenge, you might want to look at how you can continue to enjoy running without it being a constant challenge, because contrary to what lots of influencers might have you believe, running should be mostly fun and not a constant, hard grind. If you are always pushing hard, you will eventually break. Maybe set yourself some race goals, so you save running flat out for the races and not every day in your training.
If you started running as a way to get social and meet people, then look at joining a running club. If you can run for thirty minutes, you will be able to join in with club sessions – ask about which days are the most appropriate for newer runners.
Change the way you train – Important!
The Couch to 5K is NOT a good example of how to effectively train for running. It’s a great way of getting you up to thirty minutes of running, but as you might have noticed, it ramps up the running duration every single week. This is NOT sustainable. If you try to continue with the same model of constant increase, you’ll soon end up injured.
What to do after Couch To 5K is take an easy week! Only run twice, or alternatively run three times but only for twenty minutes each. Why? Because you need to give your muscles and supporting fascia a chance to recover. This concept is super-important and should stay with you throughout your running journey. Every few weeks, do a bit less. This might for example be every fourth week, although be prepared to take a an easy week sooner if you feel the need. It may be that if you’ve just finished couch to 5K, now is exactly the time for you to take an easy week. If you did the Runningversity “Running for Beginners” course instead, you will already be aware of this concept.
You might have tried to stick to the Couch To 5K plan exactly, but in ongoing running progression, you should never be a slave to the plan. If the plan says do a particular run, but your legs are still tired from the previous run, then consider if you need to skip the run, or make it shorter / easier. What to do after Couch To 5K is to always be in control of your plan. Make yourself that promise now and you’ll have a long, fun, injury-free running journey.
Sign up to a 5K race or parkrun
There are many organised 5K race events, some free and some paid. If you can run for thirty minutes in training, you are normally ready to run a 5K race. Remember, even if you haven’t reached 5K in training runs, you don’t have to have done 5K to enter a 5K race. This same idea works all the way through. You don’t have to have run 26.2 miles before you enter a marathon! So if you are wondering what to do after C25K, then maybe see how fast you can do a 5K – you shouldn’t be running fast in all your training runs – leave the max efforts for race day one or twice a month.
What will you get from doing a race? You’ll get the adrenaline on the day to push you a bit more than you thought possible. You’ll get the camaraderie of other runners – we all support each other and you’ll find that if you chat to other runners at the start, they might be as nervous as you are, even if they’ve been racing for years! You’ll get a really good idea of where you are at in terms of fitness, and can plug your finish time result into a couple of the famous Runningversity calculators:
The Training Pace Calculator gives you an idea of how fast to run in your running sessions based off your 5K finish time.
The Race Time Predictor calculator gives you an idea of how fast you might run other race distances, once you have trained for them, based off your 5K finish time.
So even if racing isn’t why you signed up for running, the experience you get will be beneficial to your overall enjoyment of running.
Join a running club or group. Or start your own!
Running clubs are a good way to meet other runners, try new things and ask for help. If there isn’t one in your area, then maybe start one! You can do Run Leader courses that take you through how to manage and lead groups of runners.
Go further each week
When figuring out what to do after Couch To 5K in terms of weekly runs, the priority should be to run more often if you have time. Ideally you should make time to increase to running five times per week, getting there gradually over the next few weeks. Once you are comfortable with running thirty minutes, five times per week, you can then think about increasing duration. Think of the increased duration as a weekly total, so you don’t have to run more minutes in every single run. Instead, you can have a couple where you run more, even eventually making one of them a “long run”.
Get faster
Once you can run five times per week, or if you only have time to run three times a week but want to progress, you can consider a speed work day. There are three main ways you get faster after Couch To 5K:
- Run slowly for a good length of time, as often as possible, so that your aerobic capacity increases and after 6+ weeks, runs start to get easier, so you can run faster with less effort.
- Run fast sometimes so that your lactate system improves, which is an additional energy system you’ll be using in your races to help you go a bit quicker, so you need to practice it sometimes in training.
- Work on your running form, agility, balance and coordination. Doing a few short sprints occasionally can help too.
Follow a 10K Running Plan
If you would like to get going on a 10K Running Plan, follow that link. The plan generator asks you a few questions about how many times you run each week and other aspects of your running and then tailors your 10K running plan to your ability.
Bonus step: Get a coach, to build a custom progression plan and work on your running form
If you need more help and advice on how to progress, consider a running coach who will hold your hand along the way. Beginner runners make all the running mistakes there are, and make them often! Having a running coach would make the process more enjoyable and reduce the time it takes you to improve by taking out all the guess-work. Contact for more information!
