You are welcome! And it is surprising (to me) how many beginning runners (that I know personally, and that post on the Runner's World forums where I hang out) make the mistake of running every run as fast and hard as they can.
If you keep most of your runs easy, you should notice that easy pace getting faster. I didn't run at all from December 2008 through February 2009, so I started somewhat from scratch last March. I ran all easy runs (I have a HR monitor, so I actually measured my HR and deliberately kept it below a threshold) through March and most of April, then started mixing in one tempo run each week at the end of April. These are just estimates looking at my log from then:
Week 1 my easy pace ranged from 11:00-11:30 pace. Week 2 it was 10:30-11:00. Week 3 I pretty much kept it at 10:30-10:35. Week 4-7, 10:15-10:30. Week 8-12, 10:00-10:20. Week 13-15, 9:45-10:15.
And so on. This March, my easy pace was around 9:20 - 2 minutes per mile faster than it was a year before. It's taking me longer to get faster, but it's still working.
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If you keep most of your runs easy, you should notice that easy pace getting faster. I didn't run at all from December 2008 through February 2009, so I started somewhat from scratch last March. I ran all easy runs (I have a HR monitor, so I actually measured my HR and deliberately kept it below a threshold) through March and most of April, then started mixing in one tempo run each week at the end of April. These are just estimates looking at my log from then:
Week 1 my easy pace ranged from 11:00-11:30 pace.
Week 2 it was 10:30-11:00.
Week 3 I pretty much kept it at 10:30-10:35.
Week 4-7, 10:15-10:30.
Week 8-12, 10:00-10:20.
Week 13-15, 9:45-10:15.
And so on. This March, my easy pace was around 9:20 - 2 minutes per mile faster than it was a year before. It's taking me longer to get faster, but it's still working.