Hi all,

I haven't posted on this thread in ages. Early December was tough. I just did not feel motivated to do much, and I had a few bad workouts mixed in but, at least I did keep going. I took most of one week off, and felt a little guilty about it, but... no more. This week, I have felt focused and ready again.
I did a brick Monday and again today (spin class + treadmill).

Well, on Monday's run I ran for 38 mins, and ran 3.4 miles. Today I ran 39 minutes, got up to 5.7 and held it most of the run. My 5k time was 33:18 (coming up to speed over a few minutes), and my total distance was 3.6 miles.
In september, 39 minutes *was* my 5k. I have shaved almost 6 minutes off my time in approximately 4 months. I don't know if that's good, but if I can continue the trend I will get to my near term goal of running a 5k in less than 30 mins soon! (that's the goal for going into the season, but hey anything better is good too). I felt pretty good on the run too, though my calves are slightly sore now.
My goal is to just go out and run around 45 minutes and try to keep inching up my speed as well.

Come January, I want to be on some kind of a more formal program. And I need to start swimming as well as get more consistent with doing weights.

How will I fit this all in? Right now I go to the gym 3x a week and usually get 1 weekend workout in as well (those haven't been as frequent the last few weeks). I spend usually 2 hrs each time I go (spin class + run, or spin + weights etc). I don't think I can go every day. I do still have a job and house stuff to do.

Also, one more question. I am most often in the 180s (low to mid) during my runs. This is at my upper HR zone if you do the math, and I have read this shouldn't be where I spend most my training time (I do not feel like I am about to keel over ever, but talking would be a challenge). However, if I slow down to a lesser HR pace, I am running really slow. So, should I purposefully run slow? This would seem to contradict my desire to get faster....

Thoughts on the above appreciated.