Muscle recovery suggestions?

[noamnety]

12. Do you have any thoughts about the couch to 5k program?

In one of the crossfit sessions we had to run 1/4 mile. I used to do 2 miles regularly (army) and even voluntarily ran a 10k at one point, but that was 20 years ago. The 1/4 mile had me too winded to talk.

In an effort to get to where I'm not humiliating myself, I also started the couch to 5k program. I'm in week one of that, which is 5 minutes walking for a warm up, then 8 reps of 60 seconds jogging and 90 seconds walking. There's a park across the street with a cross country trail marked in white chalk from a local high school, so it's all running on grass, no pavement at all.

I'm trying that three times in a week, then next week it builds to 90 seconds jogging and 2 minutes walking for 20 minutes, then the next week it builds a little more. It seems like that would be a slow enough progression that I wouldn't injure myself, but I'm not sure how long it takes to build up the strength without risking injury.