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Advice please
Enjoyed taking part in Parkruns - at 45 I had never run since school although generally keep fir with gym, cricket. Five runs five pbs down by 2 min 30 secs. But feel reaching pleateau on times but would like to push on.
Concerns that mile splits are showing decreasing speeds last two weeks - 7.43, 7.48, 8.07 then 7.21, 7.52, 8.06.
To improve stamina - would you suggest even pace or longer training runs at pace.
Any advice much appreciated.
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Comments
Most runs should be done at a steady chatting pace.
Save the fast work for your park runs.
+1 for cougie's advice - slow and steady runs will improve your speed (even if it sounds counter-intuitive).
I'd also suggest looking at some of the 5k plans on this web site, as it sounds like you need to mix up your training a bit to continue to improve. Repeating the same training means you'll repeat the same race results.
For your mile splits, the first week looks like you started slightly too fast as your pace slowed by twenty seconds. On the second week you started even faster, so its not surprising you slowed significantly (2nd & 3rd miles in both weeks are similar times). Try a steady 8:00 min/mile next time and see if you can keep a consistent speed. You can then start speeding up by 5 secs per mile.
The other thing being whether you've run the parkruns every week-end. If you have, and you have no running history, then you're probably just getting tired.