Advice for new runners: too fast? Too long?
Apologies for the naive question, but I’m hoping someone can provide some advice for some new runners trying to improve. To put it bluntly, my partner (25M) and I (25F) are not in amazing shape: we’re slightly overweight people whose gym attendance is spotty. We have been more in shape at previous times in our lives, but we’ve never been athletes with any kind of formal training or coaching. We decided to get into running, with our ultimate goal being 10k. This distance was appealing because it would be an actual accomplishment in that it would be longer than either of us had ever run before (we were both already capable of 5k), and would force us to invest some actual effort — but didn’t seem like it would be too much investment to condition for.
Well, we’ve spent the last ~6 weeks building from ~6 mi/week to ~10 mi/week by running 4 days every week, and it’s like we’ve hit this wall with stamina. Doing the 3.1 miles for the 5k is doable, but anything over that, even 3.5 miles, feels tortuous and nearly impossible. (If we can’t make the entire planned “long run” we usually make up the miles on another day of the week to make the weekly goal.) For context, my partner’s pace is pretty consistent between runs, at ~12:30/mi, while mine fluctuates a lot depending on the distance I’m planning on running (~8:30 for 400m, 9:00 for 1 mi, 11:30 for a “long run”). We both usually feel wiped by the time we complete a 5k.
I know that “fueling” and “hydration” are generally concerns for longer distances, but given how slow we are, should we prepare for 4 miles the same way that a faster runner might prepare for e.g. 6 miles, since we’re running for the same amount of time? Or might it be that we are just going too fast for our abilities as new and slow runners, and should take it down a notch to make sure that we have energy for the entire run? I also acknowledge that there’s an element of this that might be entirely mental, and pushing through might just involve getting over it, or hacking our reward systems somehow, haha. Anyway, any advice from people more experienced than ourselves would be deeply appreciated!!! Thank you!!!