hi everyone from a new joiner... I took up jogging two months ago in order to improve my fitness for other sports rather than as an end in itself. I do a hilly 3 mile jog twice or three times a week and one 5 miler at the weekend. When I started I could barely manage two miles, so at least I've worked up the distance - but I don't get any faster - I'm stuck at 28 minutes on the 3 miler. May sound a dumb question, but what's the best way ahead - trying to lengthen stride or increase the frequency of the step?

You took up running just two months ago... your body is still adapting and I think you're doing great. Don't expect too much too soon... if you start pushing for speed then you could get injured because your body simply isn't ready for that yet.

Build up the distance and frequency of running first and the speed will come naturally.

It's great that you're running hills....make them your friends because IMHO that's the best way of getting faster.

Have you looked at any races... it's good to have a goal, something to train for.

I started doing this to build up better endurance - I'm training for my karate black belt and I need to get so I don't run out of steam too quickly in sparring! it has already helped to some extent (though karate is all about a series of bursts of explosive energy rather than a long steady drain). not so keen on getting into racing, but I think I'll set some distance goals to work towards - being able to do 10 miles would give me a good buzz. I guess you're right on letting the speed thing come - but I want to get past that stage when I only like seeing pedestrians if they're coming towards me, because of the little gap in speed between us when we're heading in the same direction!!

My son does karate...so I know what you mean about the explosive energy thing.

How about trying some fartlek work as part of your training...which is short bursts of speed with recovery in between.

The easiest way of doing this is warm up for a mile, then pick 2 landmarks, they could be road signs, lamp posts or whatever...run as fast as you can from one land mark to the 2nd, then jog until you've recovered and your breathing is easy again. You can do that as many times as you want during your scheduled distance, but don't forget to end the run on a recovery.

sorry, were you looking for www.joggersforum.co.uk?

Seriously, welcome to the world of self-inflicted pain and suffering. As peeps have said above, you might want to include more variety in your running, within individual runs (eg fartlek) but also between runs. Running the same 3 miles at the same speed week in, week out will end up being mind numbingly boring. Try lengthening your long run, and running it very slow (I know it is counter-intuitive, but lots of slow miles help with speed over short distances - alledgedly). Then do one fartlek session, one tempo run (do your 3 miles at a speed where you're working hard but you don't have to spend 10 minutes on your knees to recover afterwards), and one very gentle recovery run.

10 miles is probably a good distance to aim at if you're running to stay fit for another sport. Then if you decide you do want to run for its own sake, it's easy to move from 10 miles down to a 10k or up to half-marathon.

well it's more than walking and less than 'running' ..... more of a 'Zulu shuffle' ...

like the idea of fartleks and will also try the longer and slow run, though slowing down will make my pedestrian passing problem even worse (ever seen a lorry overtaking another lorry on a steep hill..)

thanks all for the advice!

Greg's right... if you run at the same pace every training run that's the pace your body will get used to... you have to get out of the 'comfort zone' every now and then, but like I said... be careful coz although you have a certain amount of fitness from karate, you are using different muscles to run and if you push too hard too soon then your body has a way of stopping further damage...you pick up an injury

Long strides are the way, but when u first starting probably take is a little slower, I obtained a groin injury when I started doing 2 miles a day:eek: ...but now its 4 months on its alright ...never increase by more than 10% a week apparently