Part 4: Weeks 18-21

3 times a week. In order to build fitness you need to work out three times a week – with a day or two between workouts, as rest is as important as the workout itself. If you only run only once or twice a week, you body has not reached the level of fitness to proceed to subsequent weeks. This is even more significant in parts 3 and 4 of the programs where the running interval increases one or more minutes each week.

Before the run interval – Taking a deep cleansing breath before each running interval serves to calm your body down, reduce your heart rate, and give your body a renewed sense of relaxation before you begin the next run interval. Recent research has shown that alternatively to the one deep cleansing breath of 3 seconds inhalation and 3 seconds exhalation – as indicated in this program, one can increase the deep cleansing breaths to two long breaths of 4 seconds each: Inhalation through the nose and slow exhalation through the mouth – taken two times before the running interval. Therefore these 2 deep, slow breaths should take place starting 15 seconds before the running interval. Again this is more important in the Part 3 and Part 4 of the program where you are running for longer period of time.

5 minutes – warm ups  and cool downs are a crucial element of the program. Your body needs sufficient time at the beginning of a workout to warm up with muscles starting to flex but in a slow fashion so there is not a sudden “shock” to the body. This way your muscles warm up a bit and also mentally as your body prepares itself to start running. Also critical at the end of the workout, it is so important to take a slow 5 minute walk to cool down, again not to shock the system by coming to an abrupt stop since the heart needs to gradually slow as well as your breathing – plus muscles prevented from tightening which may happen if one comes to an abrupt stop.

Yes, I know that these questions are the same for Part 3. Hopefully you got a “100” this time if you didn’t do so earlier. Having these questions appear again is to emphasize the extreme importance of running 3 times a week, especially in Part 4 – so you build the required endurance to run a 5K after the last week of the program.  This is also to emphasize the importance of deep breathing that you should do more of in Part 4 during the run as you have less walking/rest intervals.