New to running, Great South Run

Hi people,

Im new to this site and new to running, i went and signed up for the 10mile Great South Run to give me some real motivation to run reguarly. I started 2 weeks ago and im currently managing about 3-4 miles, 3-4 times a week, have i left it to late to be a decent fitness so running 10m on October 28th doesnt kill me??

Thanks in advance for any replys,

Ash

I roughly calculate you've got 3 1/2 months of training time before your race, and you're averaging about 9 to 12 miles per week.

I'd say if you keep all of your runs easy - no need to beast yourself - and increase one of your runs to a weekend long run; adding on about an extra 5 to 10 minutes of running per week, you will easily build up to 8 or 9 miles in training, which will be fine to run 10 miles with.

Maybe take a rest week every 3rd week, where you do maybe half of your previous weeks mileage and then the subsequent week add on another 10 minutes to the previous high mileage you built upto.

I'm sure there's a lot more experienced runners here who could advise better, but I would think it's easily achieveable based on what you're doing already, as long as you don't get injured.  Just remember that all you need to do for now is base (easy) runs; this will prepare your body to stand upto the demands of heavier (speed/hills) training in the future.

Hope that helps.

Are you following a training plan of some sort? Between now and the end of October there is plenty of time to get yourself to a level where you will be able to do the 10 miles.

The GSR is a fairly flat route, lots of runners and plenty of support all the way round. Not a bad little event for a first race.

Yes you can get fit enough to complete the GSR without killing yourself.  Find a training plan and get some structure to your training.  It sounds like you have a reasonable base fitness but you need to start increasing one of your runs each week and a training paln will help you get the intensity right without getting injured.

thank you for your replys, im not really following much of a programme, im logging every run i do so i can see improvements. Im pretty much just running every other day the same sort of distance, but i will now make my weekend run longer.

I am in a similiar situation, although doing my first 10km in 2 weeks so did my first 10km training distance this morning. 

I've been looking for a training programme to follow can anyone point me in the direction of a good one.