I've been doing the Couch to 5K program for a while now, and I'm currently at the last week of it. I can run for 30 minutes now, but at a much, much slower pace than the average novice runner at my age and sex (as I've seen when I looked it up, at least).
So what now? The program says that I should be able to run 5k now, but I can't run it in 30 minutes, not even 40 at this pace. How do I increase my speed?
Thank you so much for the responses in advance.
EDIT: I feel like I might've been misunderstood. I can now run for 30 minutes straight, but way less than 5K in that time. The issue is that if I were to run 5K, I would be able to run it a lot slower than 40, let alone 30 minutes, at my current pace.
Apologies if this is over simplifying it, but the answer is just exposure/reps. Now that you have a 5k time, try and run it 1 minute faster. Then do that again and again. Alternatively you can try "sprint" interval training. But still, you just need to build capacity.