My jogging pace

[heanorram]

Having just completed week 5 run 3, I've got my first true time splits from my running app on my phone. I've never really known if I'm jogging at about the right pace as the splits have always included a portion of running. My run details are 2.88km with a pace of 7 min/km. My km splits were 6:37, 7:25 and 6:52. With that reckoning I would be on for the 5km in 35 minutes.

Whilst I know it's not about the time yet, I'd appreciate any advice anyone could give me as to where I'm at and what I should be aiming for.

Richard

[greenlegs Graduate]

Probably not quite what you're asking, but I'd suggest aiming for being able to run without hurting and so that you can hold a conversation! That seems to be a good indication of effective heart rate for a beginner, and heart rate is a better thing to focus on for training than pace.

Times are sort of irrelevant - the variables of age, previous fitness, gender, weather conditions, hills etc mean that you can't really say what is a good/bad running pace for a beginner.

If you work out what pace you can do comfortably now, that will probably still be good for you in week 9, but you might find it a bit harder or a bit easier, because of the other variables. I imagined that my pace would get better over the last few weeks, and maybe it did a little bit, but the focus there really is on going for longer, rather than faster.

Going on the time you've done so far, 35 min for 5k looks reasonable, but if your 20 minute run was going full-steam, it might not be sustainable for that long by week 9, as the programme is designed to aim for 30 minutes running - 35 minutes is a significant step further on stamina-wise.

See how you find week 6 - pace is much less important than keeping going at this stage. It's much easier to increase pace once you've developed stamina to keep going for 30 minutes, and you're much less likely to pick up an injury if you focus on running comfortably.

Hope that's not too unhelpful!

[Fingalo Graduate]

What Greeners said.

[heanorram Graduate]

Thanks for the good advice greenlegs. I don't think I'm going far wrong then. Just having no running partner and very little advice on the subject, the last thing I wanted was to be over or under doing it

[Rollertoaster Graduate]

I graduated at exactly the same pace as your current pace, 7 min per KM. I was slower in week 5 than that (especially on THAT run) so I would say you're doing really well right now.

But also, not to worry about pace now and what Greenlegs said