I'm a 35-year-old male who's closer to 36 than 34. I was a formerly locally competitive runner with pbs of 4:24, 15:09, 32:09, 1:11 and 2:33 (I was 24 when I ran the most recent of those pbs in the marathon).
Since 2010, I have been an on-again-off-again runner who completely committed to Crossfit in 2016 and did not running until COVID. I am 20 pounds heavier, with healthy muscle than my pb racing weight.
I have no desire to ever be that skinny again and my goals are now just for the 5k. I want to run in the 18s for a local turkey trot.
I was building back up to 30 mpw, and my IT got jacked so I shut it back down for a week+ and started building all over again with just mileage and no concern for pace. It is heating up and humidity is getting high. I was never good in the heat and find my runs are nearly 10:00/mile when running a perceived jog easy effort.
I ran a 6:03 mile TT on a bike path out-and-back earlier this week and that indicates I should be running much faster, but should I really? Does it matter. Even when I was at my fittest, I would run easy runs in the 8s and have no concern of college teammates dropping me on easy runs.