Back into running

Jill: Welcome to the blog!

My approach to working with runners that struggle with 10:00 pace (had very good results with it when my wife was regaining fitness after delivering a baby) - do not train at a pace that is slower than 10 even if that means you have to take walking breaks. Run as far as you can at that pace 6 days a week. If you cannot run 1 mile straight without slowing down, then split it up and take walking breaks until your total distance is at least 1 mile, but do not slow down to finish the distance without breaks.

I am not 100% sure why this works, but I did observe that runners that train at slower than 10:00 tend to not improve very much if at all, while the ones that cross that threshold seem to progress at a good rate. What surprised me was that it did not seem to vary too much with the fitness of a runner. I was initially expecting that a runner than is struggling to break 10 for 1 mile would get enough aerobic and muscular stimulus from 12:00 pace, just like a runner than runs all out in 8:00 would benefit from training at 10:00, but it does not seem to work that way. Perhaps this is due to the drastic difference in the biomechanics and metabolic activity between 10:00 and 12:00 - while 10:00 is still in the range of running, 12:00 way too close to walking.