Up early to beat the heat. Faster or longer?

[RosesAreRed777]

I have been consolidating my runs and now I am happy and amazed to report that I am running 5k and 35 mins reasonably comfortably. When the time is right should I push for faster within the time frame or longer distance? Thanks 😊

[Cmoi Graduate]

Running slower is the way to improve your aerobic base, which in turn will improve your capacity to speed up. At this stage pushing to go faster is more likely to result in injury.

After a while you'll probably get an idea of whether you have a preference for distance or for speed. I always thought I'd prefer the latter, I don't!

[RosesAreRed777 Graduate in reply to Cmoi]

Thank you 😊

[IannodaTruffe Mentor]

This FAQ Post about getting faster may help you answer your own question healthunlocked.com/couchto5...

[RosesAreRed777 Graduate in reply to IannodaTruffe]

Thank you

[nowster Graduate]

I see it's nearly been three weeks since you graduated.

What I'd suggest is that you start mixing up the type of runs. Longer slow runs is a good aim here, but don't do all your runs like that.

Do some shorter ones. Do some intervals runs again. Do some unstructured fartlek runs (in the original sense of it).

You could look at the Magic Plan on the Bridge to 10K forum here.

The adventure begins here, and it's where you find out what you like to do. Experiment!

[RosesAreRed777 Graduate in reply to nowster]

Awesome I’m up for that! 😁

[nowster Graduate in reply to RosesAreRed777]

I didn't use the Magic Plan, but did a progression a little similar.

The recommendation is to not to increase by more than 10% on what you did in a previous week, whether that's the duration or distance of any one run, or all the runs combined.

Taking a rest day after each run is still very strongly recommended. I didn't run on any consecutive days until I'd been regularly running for about 9 months.

[Dendev75 Graduate]

Well done 👏🏻 I’d like to know the answer to this too 😊