Rubbish run this morning!

[SarahP0003]

For the last few weekends I've been running to Audiofuel's 'The First Hour' Run Easy and managing around 8k in the hour. As I get frustrated with myself and want to get faster, this morning I bought 'Run Free', which is faster bpm, and thought I'd try that. Big mistake! I was really struggling after 10mins so no way I could keep it up for an hour. Lesson learned I guess - I'll stick to the slower one for now and hope that speed will come eventually!

[Landesman Graduate]

It's funny how it's quite hard to break out of your natural running pace. 160bpm (of Run Free) is about right for me, but I really struggle with the AudioFuel Martin Yelling Interval Training which is 160/170/180 - 180bpm is just SO hard to maintain. And yet some of their other Interval tracks go up to 200 bpm, whch seems totally impossible!

Find your rhythm and then you can increase or decrease your pace by varying your stride length - or, at least, that's what I do.

[SarahP0003 Graduate]

Thanks Landesman. I really want to get faster but can't imagine ever running at 200 bpm! It's hard to find the right kind of pace when you want to get quicker but your suggestion of altering stride length is a good one, thanks. I'll try that with Run Free and hopefully will be able to improve on 8k eventually!

[suzybenj Graduate]

I think I have found slowly slowly catchee monkee. I am not fast - but I have improved, the speed work has helped both run easy and the intervals. But it has taken weeks and weeks of perseverance to see the smallest improvement. Hill training is the best for stamina and endurance. so I do both interval training - audio fuel and other days enforced hill training. So hang in there things will improve.

[SarahP0003 Graduate]

Thanks Suzy, it's obviously worked for you! I think I know that I need to do hill work but haven't braved it yet. I really must build it in and give it a try - I've been putting it off because I don't think I can do it but I guess I never will with that attitude! I'll give it a go this week and see how I get on.

[swanscot Graduate]

I'd mix in some interval training in one of your sessions. Today I ran for 20 mins at about 5:30 mins pace, then did Audiofuel PowerUp 2012. This has intervals at 180bpm, but only sprinting for 30 - 75 seconds. Last week I couldn't complete all the intervals (75 seconds was a long time), but was pleased to see some progress this week. I find doing intervals training once a week, or once a fortnight (hill sessions alternative weeks) has helped my overall pace.

[SarahP0003 Graduate in reply to swanscot]

Thanks Swanscot, I will try to mix it up a bit more with intervals and hills as you suggest and hopefully that will help. Can't imagine ever managing your kind of pace at the moment but hopefully I'll get there!