Pink - I'm in southern Florida... let me tell you about heat. My runs happen at 6am these days. Tonight my workout didn't start till 7pm. (biking). Its dawn or dusk that I run. Thankfully we have well lit areas that I can run. In the winter, I run in the dark too because of early sunsets.

And as ennay said - finding that sweetspot for the slow run. I find that outdoors my slow can be 4.7 - but after too long my quads start to ache because I'm doing more of a lunge jog in order to slow to that pace - but I can regulate breathing and then can start going faster again. Having the GPS/HRM to go by is a nice techie gadget that I can see what i'm doing after the fact. I can make sense of my workouts.

I agree with outside running eaaarly in the AM. I am out the door by 5:15AM and the temp is nice (even here in AZ). I use a Garmin watch to track my pace and distance. I think of using the Garmin as running on a treadmill without the treadmill.

Lol. Seems outside running might be better for me. However, it just won't work right now. Not only for the heat and humidity reasons, but I'm a single mom with a young child and would have no childcare if I took to running outside (gym has a childcare center). Trying to run outside with my son (4yo) would be a disaster waiting to happen!

I would definitely suggest running intervals at a pace that is comfortable for you. Running slower than is natural is hard. My sister went running with her boyfriend (she's 5'2", he's 6'2") and he said it was really tough keeping his pace that slow. It just wasn't comfortable for him.

Find a pace that's comfortable for you and run at it for as long as you can (without absolutely killing yourself, you need to do it again) then recover 1-2minutes. Repeat. Again and again. After a few weeks run for longer and walk for less. You'll be amazed at how fast you improve. I also think it makes the run less boring (I haaaate treadmill running unless I'm doing sprints).

Can you run outside at the gym? I know that at my gym, many people (and even some of the classes) will run outside. They meet at the gym, warmup/stretch inside the gym then head outside to run the sidewalk. That's actually what I've been doing lately.

Yes, I think I'm going to stick with the run/walk intervals (and I'm doing C25K) for now. Running outside the gym is a big no. The gym I go to is in a large strip area right next to a major freeway. And unfortunately, the gym doesn't have an indoor track.

Ennay, rockstar87 and carlyjordan2002, I must say . I came in to finish reading the responses and thought I had went into the wrong thread.

FYI - I cleaned up this thread, someone came to our site to spread some misinformation so I got rid of it and the responses. Keep doing your thing ladies.

I don't think you are jogging too fast, as most people pointed out, jogging under 5mph feels more like walking than jogging. You should work on building up your endurance. C25K is a great program for that!