Jogging, what is more important, pace or distance

Reg'stoy

Have been increasing the lenght of my jogs (incidentially when does jogging turn into running ) both on the road and on a treadmill when I manage to get the time to use one.

I managed to jog last weekend for 42 mins, I have no idea of distance but I did use my heart moniter (kept rate below 165ish). Today I managed to use a treadmill and decided, as it might be a while before I got on one again to go for an extended period of time. I set constant heart rate to 160 and managed 60 mins excluding warm up/down and covered according to the machine 8.1 km's and burned 525 calories.

So I have a couple of questions,
No 1, Is using a treadmill better or worse than road running as in, is 8 k on a treadmill only equal to 5 k on the road, if you get my meaning. Someone told me that you should set an incline on the treadmill to make it similar to road running.
No 2, Should I increase the pace of my jogging thereby decreasing the distance or continue at my normal pace but go further.
I should have said I jog tue, thur and sat's and use my crosstrainer at home mon,wed,fri.
No 3, Should I as my wife says buy a treadmill (very pricey).
No 4, as I said above I only did 8.1 k on the treadmill and considering people do 10k's in half an hour I seem to be going pretty slow (it felt fast) hence my question as to increasing pace
Finally, do you reach a point where you are only marking time as in you're not getting fitter but just staying steady, sorry if I'm being foolish there.
I'm not looking to run and run but maybe do a 10k, I have a radio Nova 10k medal somewhere (God I'm showing my age there ) so any hints/tips would be very helpful

mikemac

Reg'stoy wrote: »

So I have a couple of questions,
No 1, Is using a treadmill better or worse than road running as in, is 8 k on a treadmill only equal to 5 k on the road, if you get my meaning. Someone told me that you should set an incline on the treadmill to make it similar to road running.
No 2, Should I increase the pace of my jogging thereby decreasing the distance or continue at my normal pace but go further.
I should have said I jog tue, thur and sat's and use my crosstrainer at home mon,wed,fri.
No 3, Should I as my wife says buy a treadmill (very pricey).
No 4, as I said above I only did 8.1 k on the treadmill and considering people do 10k's in half an hour I seem to be going pretty slow (it felt fast) hence my question as to increasing pace
Finally, do you reach a point where you are only marking time as in you're not getting fitter but just staying steady, sorry if I'm being foolish there.
I'm not looking to run and run but maybe do a 10k, I have a radio Nova 10k medal somewhere (God I'm showing my age there ) so any hints/tips would be very helpful

No.1 Running outside is more work. Set the incline to 1 or 2 to compensate.
No.2 I think it's better for you to increase the pace and do shorter workouts. Jogging on a threadmill sure gets boring and you need to push yourself to improve.
No.3 I'd advise against it. Very pricey and the cheap ones are cheap for a reason. Spend money on a great pair of runners, maybe a pedometer and go outside. Before you reply that's it rains, it's cold, etc. I'm just back from a run and it's very warm outside and barely a breeze in the air.
No.4 Be assured that very few people can run 10k in 30 minutes. Your pace is fine for someone out of practice.
Slow and steady progress will soon see you improving.
If you want to run 10k, this site has plans and is popular around here
http://www.halhigdon.com/

Edit: Haven't got the hang of this fancy new multi-quote tool yet. Sorry it's not easy to read.

Running Bing

Reg'stoy wrote: »

Have been increasing the lenght of my jogs (incidentially when does jogging turn into running ) both on the road and on a treadmill when I manage to get the time to use one.

I managed to jog last weekend for 42 mins, I have no idea of distance but I did use my heart moniter (kept rate below 165ish). Today I managed to use a treadmill and decided, as it might be a while before I got on one again to go for an extended period of time. I set constant heart rate to 160 and managed 60 mins excluding warm up/down and covered according to the machine 8.1 km's and burned 525 calories.

So I have a couple of questions,
No 1, Is using a treadmill better or worse than road running as in, is 8 k on a treadmill only equal to 5 k on the road, if you get my meaning. Someone told me that you should set an incline on the treadmill to make it similar to road running.
No 2, Should I increase the pace of my jogging thereby decreasing the distance or continue at my normal pace but go further.
I should have said I jog tue, thur and sat's and use my crosstrainer at home mon,wed,fri.
No 3, Should I as my wife says buy a treadmill (very pricey).
No 4, as I said above I only did 8.1 k on the treadmill and considering people do 10k's in half an hour I seem to be going pretty slow (it felt fast) hence my question as to increasing pace
Finally, do you reach a point where you are only marking time as in you're not getting fitter but just staying steady, sorry if I'm being foolish there.
I'm not looking to run and run but maybe do a 10k, I have a radio Nova 10k medal somewhere (God I'm showing my age there ) so any hints/tips would be very helpful

:eek: Where the hell did you get that from?

Thats over 6 miles in a half an hour. That is a 5 minute per mile pace.


Considering running 1 mile in four minutes is a benchmark for top amateur middle distance runners(and thats one mile and stopping not endurance) I would say very very few people could run 10k in 30 minutes.


The average pace for runners doing 10k is between 8-11 minutes per mile. 7 would be very good, over 11 wouldnt be great.


As for what is better it depends on what you want out of it. For general fitness a mixture is usually a good idea i.e. some days short and quick other days long and slow. For more specific things like if you someday want to run a marathon that is endurance/aerobic fitness and will obviously require long distance runs but for sports that require short periods of physical exertion (Boxing, 5 a side football etc) you will require more anerobic fitness and so shorter faster runs are better.