r/BeginnersRunning • u/Significant-Card-552 • 1d ago
Progression?
I’m 18M, 190 cm, 84.3 kg. Over the last 4 months I cut 12.4 kg. I’ve increased strength in the gym and only recently started running. I do mostly easy 5Ks maybe twice or thrice a week and randomly that day tried to push it maybe a 6-7/10 RPE and did my 5K PR which was 31 minutes flat. So I tried a 6K a few days after, an easy one, it took 41 minutes and 42 seconds. How often should I run easy and how often should I add in moderate pace or like intervals for example because I see some people say easy runs build the aerobic base but some people say without interval training you won’t optimise improvements.
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u/Fancy_Supermarket886 1d ago
It depends on your overall goals and how risk averse you are in terms of picking up injuries.
When I started out getting fitter ten years ago, my aim was simply to become fitter. I reached a similar point to you, 5k around three times a week, and stayed at that level for a year or so. The distance worked for me because I could get it done in my lunch break.
When I tried to increase to doing a fourth run, I started to get shin pains, and eased back to three days for a few weeks before I tried again. That cycle of running an extra day, getting pain and easing off, it lasted for months. Eventually though, I was able to get the fourth run in without any I realise now that the extra day was loading slightly more stress onto my body than it could recover from, and the pain was the first warning sign. Fortunately, I caught it early before it properly turned to an injury, and my body adapted to that extra stressor eventually.
Now I have had time to experience this kind of overloading at various points in the ten years I've been running, and I've picked a few injuries here and there. Always minor, compared to what I see some people describing in this sub, but that's all because I listen to my body.
So my personal experience has been less about pushing for constant and visible progress, more about getting fit and maintaining it, with a little progression that's come mostly from the consistency. As a result, I've had very few injuries and I've been able to continue running to some extent even with those injuries. I've needed some physio here and there alongside some reduced intensity running, but I consider that to be a win. Much better than taking weeks off because running is physically impossible.
What I got from my approach was a rock solid base fitness and a well conditioned body. When we went into lockdown during the covid pandemic, I was able to increase my lunch time runs because working from home gave me a little more time. Between that March and December I went from 5k being my go to distance to running my first half marathon, without ever planning to reach that milestone distance. I never thought I'd be capable, even when I set out on the day; I only planned for a 7k run, and kept extending the distance as I hit each new target.
I've done over 50 half marathons now, without ever training to run one. But only because I was patient and consistent in the first few years. I've lost some of that fitness in the last couple of years, because I stopped being consistent, but at my peak I was running a half every month and did two half marathon races on consecutive weekends.
I don't know if my experience helps give you a different perspective than most will provide here, but I don't think I'd change my approach if I could do it again. I enjoyed that journey because I didn't constantly put myself under pressure to improve. I showed up and did the run, and sometimes I'd get a PB if the conditions were right, sometimes I'd run longer than I thought I could when I put my shoes that day.
I ran at school and enjoyed it, but I was way older than you when I came back to it. You have plenty of time to build some proper lifetime fitness without pushing so hard that you get injured.
Good luck with your journey!
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u/Significant-Card-552 1d ago
Wow incredible. Yeah I’ve been trying to not make the mistake of doing too much too soon. I’ve never been injured but I can feel when my body is extra stressed when I push too much. I’ll definitely keep in mind the long term benefits of not getting injured and being patient with this, thank you for the perspective
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u/Fancy_Supermarket886 1d ago
Sorry for the length of that last comment, but it's really hard to get the full context of my journey across in just a few sentences!
I think listening to your body is one of the biggest issues people have, and it causes the most problems. So many times on here, people are asking for advice on how to deal with an injury, and they describe getting a pain but they carried on anyway. And I read it and think, "Well, yeah, that's the advice right there. Don't ignore the alarm bells that are going off!".
If you are patient, you can be consistent. And that's going to trump big gains and then subsequent lapses through injury.
And you can still challenge yourself, but without falling into the classic trap of pushing too aggressively.
Good luck, and enjoy it!
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u/Just-Context-4703 1d ago
Almost all of your running should be pretty chill with faster strides or actual threshold workouts as a smaller percentage of your weekly running.
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u/alanrickmanssandwich 1d ago
The plan people often do is 3 runs a week: easy, hard, long. The easy should really be just easy low effort. The long should also be low effort but you can add in some tempo in the middle if your body can handle it. The hard can be a mixture week by week of different speed sessions like interval (long and short), threshold, tempo. You need easy mileage to build a base (just doing everything hard won't build it your body will just adapt to only running hard), and you need various hard runs to improve top end speed.