Quote Originally Posted by Susan Otcenas View Post
Eclectic - Your 5K program has you running 8 miles in one workout?


I ran 5.25 miles this morning with a friend. We kept the pace very comfortable until the last 10 minutes, when we kicked it up a bit. I felt fairly strong, especially up the grades near the end. It's been nice having someone to run with once a week these past 3 weeks. Good conversation makes the miles go by fairly quickly.

Susan
I was surprised too when I first got it last fall. (I wasn't intending on doing a 1/2 at that time.) I thought 8 miles no way! and why? It goes up to 10. But I decided to stick w/ it and when I switched over to the 1/2 program it was very very similar until about week 12 when the 1/2 program adds some miles mid week.

One thing I have found is I am now faster on the 5k because I know I can sustain that pace for that long w/o a problem.
And I have dropped 2 minutes off my walking mile!

We also do something similar in Swimming - we do a 20 min swim and see what our average 100 time is. We then know that we can easily maintain that pace for 20 min so we can kick it up a notch or 2 for shorter races.