i finished the couch-to-5k program!!

Congratulations! You've come a long way in just 2 months.  Isn't it a great feeling to reflect back on that? 

Make no apologies for being proud and sharing the news with us. It's fun to read posts like this.   

That is awesome!

Before you know it, you will reach 10k!

Congratulations! 

thank you all so much

i've got a question... the next few weeks i'll be busy running the 30 mins till i feel really comfy with running that "long"... i'll run a 5k end of april and would like to run it sub 30 mins...

so here's my question... should i keep running 30 mins till i run 5k or more or should i start adding minutes again when ever i feel comfy with the 30 mins and speed will come by itself?  

Awesome! Great job.

Yay, Kathie! Awesome job - and that's definitely not a rant. It's running.

As for increasing your running, following the 10 percent rule is a good way to go. Try increasing your long run to 35 min. next week and see how you feel! Running ROCKS!

Congrats!  I finished that program back in May this year.  I did my first tri in August.  Once I could run 3 miles, I increased my speed by doing some interval speed work over shorter distances once a week and then the other 2 runs would be a medium run at a moderate pace and a long run at an easy pace. 

Now when I say intervals, I don't mean anything super serious or fast, I just did them by feel.  I would run 6mph for a minute then back to 5mph for 90 seconds and just repeat that.  Sometimes I would run 7 or 8 mph for a minute or two and then back to 5mph or walk depending on how I felt.  I would just do that for 20 minutes on the treadmill and that really helped my speed.  Eventually running my normal 5.2mph felt slow and I was able to maintain 6mph for longer and longer each run.  I'm certainly not fast, but I'm faster then I used to be. 

Congrats! That is awesome!

I started with the couch-to-5K program too and had great success. You've come a long way so you may want to take a week or so and let the body rest a bit without trying to crank up the time. Then when you do pile on 10% a week for 3 weeks and back off the 4th week. So for 30 min's that would be adding 3 min's a week.