Couch to 5k – Westlake family
In January 2025 the Westlake family joined Couch to 5K together, below Lisa describes their experience: Over Christmas of 2024 I felt I needed to make some changes. My...
In January 2025 the Westlake family joined Couch to 5K together, below Lisa describes their experience:
Over Christmas of 2024 I felt I needed to make some changes. My work/life balance was all wrong, I was feeling sluggish, and my weight was creeping up.
As a family we’d had a tricky few months and as a result of declining mental health, Joe made the decision to change jobs, and so we were navigating new routines etc.
I saw a Facebook advert for a Couch to 5K programme starting in January and thought it would be a good start. I asked Joe to join me as I knew he would push me to get out even if neither of us felt like it and he begrudgingly agreed.
Our daughter Jazz (13) was keen to join us, and I knew she wouldn’t want to stay at home whilst we were out running so that seemed like a good idea. That just left our son Isaac (16) and to his dismay I decided it would be good for him to join us, we would face the challenge as a family!
We went along to the first Couch to 5K session and were met by Kira, Helen and a few other volunteer run buddies. They were so friendly and enthusiastic, and every week they encouraged us and supported us to make it through the program. The other ‘newbie runners’ were also a friendly bunch, and we all supported each other in achieving our goal of being able to run for 30mins or 5K. It didn’t matter who was the fastest, the aim was to complete the program at our own pace, just to keep going and not give up!
Today, 22 March 2025, Family Westlake completed our first parkrun! Our times were better than we expected:
Lisa: 33mins 26s
Joe: 29mins, 56s
Isaac: 31mis, 20s
Jazz: 32mins, 54s
Joe, who initially was only doing it to support me, is keen to carry on. He has even whispered that he wouldn’t dismiss doing a 10K at some point! Isaac, who has been the least enthusiastic throughout, has committed to joining us for a minimum of 2/3 runs a week and has even admitted that it’s not the worst thing in the world to do!
Jazz is keen to make the park run a weekly ‘thing’ and wants to push herself to keep improving her times. I am keen to continue running three times a week and am enjoying the fact that it makes me leave work at a decent time whilst improving my fitness and hopefully helping me lose some of the weight that has crept up on me.
I am loving the fact that we are doing it as a family and even if we don’t actually stay together, running at the same pace whilst out, we go together and come home together and compare our performances after!
I feel my mental health has improved over the last few weeks too and even if I don’t feel like leaving the house for a run, I am always glad I made the effort and feel good after.
Thank you to the C25K volunteer leaders.
Family Westlake
