After separating from my wife a couple of months ago, I've picked up running because that's what you do, right?

I was chubby then (max at 90kg?) but now hover around 70kg at 178cm, am pretty pleased with the optical results; I have a visible six-pack and overall way better muscle toning (I do lift some as well but not seriously), so that's cool. I've made quick-ish progress; my first "run" was for about 8 minutes before I couldn't go on due to dying, I also suffered from "exercise induced asthma" for the first two weeks or so, robbing me of breath every time about half an hour after I stop an exercise but I just went at it the next day and so on until it went away.

I've run two 10k races already (in about 50 minutes) but in training I'm closer to 45m; my mid term goal is to run a 10k race in under 40 minutes and also a half-marathon next spring - the HM I'm pretty sure I could run already, if going slow enough, just never tried, yet - but I also want to go fast-ish.

My big problems (as spoiled by the thread title) are my knees and flat-ish feet, forcing me to pause due to pain for up to a week after a hard training and in the worst case almost 2 weeks after my first race which was on the road while I trained mostly on forest ground etc. In fact, (leg-) muscle aches and stamina aren't much of a limiting factor in my running - but I constantly have to try to slow myself down in order to be able to maybe run the next day again and so on, leading to much slower progress than I want or think would be possible for me, if it weren't for the pain. Or more frequently I'll say "**** it", go for a personal best time and then be knocked out for a couple of days.

I want to take this pretty seriously; I had a running analysis made and tried a lot of shoes, sought and have gotten advice on running form, which I'm working on, and so on. My last race was last Sunday and my knees are almost ok again, which is progress for me, alas, I've caught a bad cold and will probably still be out until Monday or so.

I'm already using an app to track my runs but I want to use this blog to add data like knee hurtiness after, effort during and so on per workout and also to try to keep myself accountable in not going too fast/hard/far so that I can do more frequent, hopefully pain-free workouts.

My so far only anecdotal evidence says I can run as frequent and long as I want as long as I go really slow (like 5:30/km+) and I can also go as fast as I want as long as I keep it under 5-6km but neither is very fun. There aren't any big, cool races left in my area this year, so I'm not under pressure to get better, fast.

So yeah, my plan is to get a more sustainable weekly regimen going, strengthen my knees and from there get faster.

Any advice people have is of course greatly appreciated.

Nice progress in such a short time frame!

Can you post your weekly training schedule?

Thanks! I'm actually pretty proud of myself; I started together with a much more sporty friend and now I'm more or less running literal laps around him, heh.

For the last month, I've given up on trying to schedule any training because I knew I'd race on Sept 10th so I simply tried to get a run in whenever I felt my knees would agree.

The week leading to the race Sunday I ran:

Monday 5.5km at 4:40 pace (felt easy, cut short because I had to rescue a maiden lol)
Wednesday 8km at 4:27 pace (felt hard, pretty fast for me could have pushed for 10 but with race nearing didn't)
Friday 5.6km at 4:17 (felt hard but good overall, only wanted to run 5 anyway, also quicker than I thought because I didn't check speed underway)

I haven't set up any coming schedule yet, because I'm not yet sure at all what I'm going to do, how I'm going to feel etc.

But what I plan to do is:

- One "long" (10-15km) run a week AS SLOW AS I CAN FORCE MYSELF haha
To that end I've "signed up" with a couple of running groups in my city and will chose the best / the one with the prettiest ladies - their pace isn't that fast, running with others is great fun and I can kill a lot of birds with that stone, so I'm looking forward to it.

- get to a point where I can complete 3 or 4 additional runs a week without pain. I'm not sure how I can get there, for the first week I will force myself not to go over 5km per run no matter what and don't run on consecutive days, then see from there how it goes. I have run 3-4 consecutive times without pain before, by keeping mileage and tempo low, so it should be possible.

I'm hoping I can get there by gradually getting better at running and not having to do any extra knee strengthening exercises but I'm open to it if I don't see results in, say, a month.

Before I started running, I never cared that much when I was sick, now I'm so pissed off about this cold haha!

Haven't forgotten about you, dear reader - my knees are a bit more ****ed up from the last race than I anticipated, yay.

Getting better though, I feel I could have gone for a run today already but instead decided to post and wait for another day, I think it's better to be a bit conservative for the short-term future.