Hi Laura

Just wanted to be the first to say WELL DONE!! I have been running a little less time than you and I am doing my first 10k race on the 26th, so know how tough it is! I've found my pace has increased over the past three months with strength and stamina. However I'm sure the more experienced on here will have specific methods to increase speed. I think your last statement sums it up though, do it because you love it! What more motivation can we need? Well done again....

Adrian

Hi Laura,

I spent years running at the same pace - I'd go out for a run and basically just run it as fast as I could. Consequently I didn't really see any improvement in my race times. I only really discovered the different types of training sessions on joining GRG last year and since then I have introdiced a lot of variety into my training (tempo, intervals, hill sessions and long slow runs). If you haven't seen descriptions of these already here on the website they are under ARticles and Advice/ Training Pace Calculator

In fact where I probably went wrong was to not run slowly enough for some runs, especially longer runs. I was a bit sceptical at first as it did seem slow but you can really build up endurance and distance this way.

SInce last year I've knocked about 5minutes off my 10k time from 1:10:57 to 56:56 last Sunday.

So for me advice is to intoduce lots of variety in your training both slow longer runs and faster shorter runs.

Good luck!!

Karen