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If you concentrate on your technique and efficiency as well as distance for the long stuff this'll help your training when you go for shorter distance time improvements.
Yup, at the moment I'm using Parkrun as the weekly tempo run that the marathon training plan calls for. It helps me push myself harder to have other people to keep pace with and overtake me, can't quite find the same motivation on a solo run.
Have joined local running club (that also does tri stuff) and so I'll go along to a coaching session at some point to have my technique pulled apart and rebuilt.
Around Christmas I should be down to the weight I was when I did my parkrun PB (which was April last year from a September start) so I should be ahead of the game this time.
Major focus is on keeping the long easy runs at a sensible pace and not going too fast, have been running most on HR rather than worrying about pace. Each of the last 3 10k runs (over the last 8 days) have been slightly faster than the one before and with slightly lower HRavg each time, which is nice. Running slowly is hard.
Long distance has to be your focus though for now, so the 5k target can wait until you're done and need new challenge.
If you concentrate on your technique and efficiency as well as distance for the long stuff this'll help your training when you go for shorter distance time improvements.