I just completed my 50 mile online Race at Your Pace challenge for this month, which also means I have miles to add to the Round the Moon group challenge. I'm trying to increase my pace, at least on shorter runs, as I have the 10k Blenheim charity race at the end of September and want to give the cutoff time a run for its money: I was shocked at how slow my debut park run was. I've brought my pace up quite a bit and have learned that I can run faster than I thought and don't get any more tired or out of breath running faster. My average pace for shorter distances was 9min/k, so I think I'm definitely getting speedier. I'm aiming to do one shorter run a week with fartleks.
I was fatigued this month though, and think the change in the weather and the increase in distance and number of running days may be responsible - I shall see if my body adjusts, as often happens. I feel more drained as it gets colder ... I'm one of those rare people who is energised when it's hot. I had an ECG to be on the safe side, and that was normal.
So some interesting developments for me. I spent months increasing distance and now am working on pace too. We shall see.
You're just fab and brilliant whatever the reasons Flick, you try really hard, put lots of concerted effort into each run. Very proud of you anyway and congratulations on the 50 mile challenge 👍😘😊 xxx
well done on the distance Hidden great work! and well done with your speed goal
I know you didn't ask, but I am going to give you my 5 p of experience for the speedwork, since I have been working on it for the whole summer (please feel free to ignore it).
First, and most important: do not increase both speed and distance. when you include faster workouts, you do not want to increase the distance from previous week (for me, I stopped at the same miles per week for the whole summer).
What worked for me was to add a couple of sessions a week to work on speed. One with intervals (on a track if you have one so you know the distances, or with time will work) and one with either fartlek or threshold run (meanly a semi-long run with a faster middle 2/4 miles or a faster last 2/4 miles).
In the first you want to improve your 5K pace. so you want to run 600-1000 mt multiple times (start with 4, then increase to 8/10 600 mt. or start from 3X 1000mt and then increase to 6. you want to recover but not too much (2-3 minutes jogging). If you do not have measured distances, you can read 600 mt. as fast 3' and 1000mt as fast 5'.
if you want speed work (faster) then you do need a track and you want to recover more with faster pace.
The second is simpler: fartlek is just you runniing 1' fast and 1' slow or as long as you like fast and as long as you like slow, but you need to feel the fast work a bit. As already said above, the threshold run is meanly a semi-long run with a faster middle 2/4 miles or a faster last 2/4 miles.
please let me know if you have questions. hope you find your improvement method for speed
Oh, that's great, really useful. I'm kind of looking at speed more now, though ?i will have to get back to increasing distance at some point if i want to do half marathons next year. No tracks here I'm afraid, just hills - which slow me down while building stamina.
Thank you. And I just snorted tea all over my phone! Bits and boobs indeed! I was going to say tut tut but no doubt you would think it was something else 😂😂😂
It might be fun to try an out of breath run one day Flick, just to see what happens 😃—if I'm doing a fast 5k, say a parkrun for a PB, I get progressively more raggedy from about 3.5k to the end, where it feels like I've barely breath left anywhere in my body. But the minute I stop running I recover almost instantly. I think you might find something similar as you're clearly a fit person! I read a thing in a running magazine at the physio that said—and I can quote because I took a photo of it as a reminder to myself—'if you reach the halfway point of a 5k race feeling confident you can maintain your pace to the finish line then you're doing it wrong'. And I know you're not racing on your training runs but I do think you might be surprised how much you can push your speed if you want to!
Thank you, I will try pushing more. I was thinking today that if I was running for my life, I would have to run till I was out of breath. So I’m game to try that x
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great work! and well done with your speed goal 
Help- HM cutoff time
Swan River HM, Perth, Australia 
10k but no bling 🏃🏼♀️
Progression running - my experience
