The Running Woman

Actually, most of your running should be at a comfortable pace and it sounds like you have found that pace.  But you might think of adding some speed work to your workouts.  As a newer runner, your speed work should be pretty unstructured and more just fun.  A great introduction to speed work is something called fartleks which is a Swedish word for "speed play".  The way to do it is to pick one day a week where you can run someplace that has some nice long straightaways.  Warm up for about 10-15 minutes at your easy pace and then pick up the pace to about an 8 on the effort scale for 1 minute.  Then return to your easy pace for 2-3 minutes.  Pick up the pace to an 8 again.  Do this back and forth 4 times and then do a 10-15 minute cool down.  You can play with the warm up and cooldown times as you are comfortable - start with 10 minutes each side and even start with 2 sets of fartleks if you prefer.  Eventually work up to 15 minutes warm up and cool down and 8 sets of fartleks.  Once that's comfortable, increase your speedy time to 2 minutes and reduce your recovery time to 2 minutes.  These are fun and easy and you can even do them on the treadmill.  Don't worry about how far or how fast you're going.  Do it by pure effort level.

For now, don't worry about other speedwork.  Your half training should be fun and enjoyable.  But this is a cool thing to do to let you vary your pace a bit and you'll probably be surprised to see that your pace on your long runs picks up a bit too.

 

Hi.

I am a slooow runner also - after 5 years of running pretty faithfully, I run a 10:15 race pace (10 miler).  I started at 12:00, so I have basically only improved 15 seconds a mile a year!

That being said - the only thing that has really improved my time, I think, is speedwork.  I hate it.  I really do.  But pushing myself in terms of speed is the only way I get better.

As I was whining about this one day to my husband, he said:  "well, duh!  Of course you have to push yourself hard to get better.  Running easy all the time is like lifting 2 pound weights and expecting to get stronger."