Introducing myself and my goals :)

Hello all

I'm new here and kinda new in the "Running world".
I'm a 31 year old man from Lisboa, Portugal.

I've always enjoyed sport.
In my 20's have played mainly Football (Soccer) as an amateur but with lots of intensity till 24/25 years old.

Then I started working and the time was less. I used to make some runs once in a while.
Never had professional councelling, however.
For the last 4 years (until 2months ago) I have been making 2 weekly sessions of sport (sometimes 3) which consists of thursday trainning with my football team (that is a game between friends for 1 hour) and a weekend footbal game (70 min).
Had a minor injury 2 months ago, Stopped for 1 week or 2 and then the season was almost finished.

Now to the important part

3 weeks ago I decided that I should make regular trainning running.
I make 3/4 runs every week, normally at 7am.
I'm aiming for a 8 Km run in 25th Septembre.
Today and yesterday my training consisted of 5km run.
My times were: 23:20 and 22:28.

I've been studying some things about preparation for this kind of race but I would like to hear some advice here.
I've heard that making one (or more) weekly long and slow run helps improving our times.
Let me know if you have suggestions for me and I'll keep you informed about my evolution.

Notice that once or twice a week I make 24h (or night) shifts working (I'm a doctor); I'm 1,79m and 60Kg (so, no need to loose fat )

(sorry about my not very correct English)

Welcome!

There are two pieces of training for races - 1 is time and 2 is distance. Each has its own workout. To improve your time/speed, you want to focus on these areas:

Intervals (8x400m at your goal pace), Hill running (find a good hill about 1/4 mile long and run up and down as many times as you can) and strength training (lunges, squats, bridges). Do the strength training 2 times/week, and alternate weeks with intervals and hills, 1 day/week.

To improve your distance/endurance, incorporate 1 -2 Long, slow distance runs each week. I do one on Sundays and then one on Wednesdays - but you can adjust to your schedule. These will be done at a much slower pace than your goal pace. A good measure is to run at a pace where you could talk and run at the same time without struggling. The goal of these runs is to finish the distance, regardless of the time.

To combine the two together, you will do 1-2 tempo runs each week. You can look at your tempo run like a bell curve: You will start at your long, slow distance pace and over time gradually build to your goal pace, reaching this pace half way through your run. Then you will gradually decrease back to your long, slow distance pace. As an example, if you were to do a 30 min tempo run, your first 5 min would be spent at your long, slow distance pace, then the next 5 min would be a bit faster (say a 10K pace), then the next 5 minutes would be at your goal pace, then back down to the 10K pace for 5 minutes, 5 minutes at your lsd pace, and then 5 min of recovery jog.

I hope that all of that makes sense and anyone feel free to jump in and correct me if I missed something. If you can get in 4 runs each week, I would recommend something like this:
1 day of hill/intervals (alternate weeks)
1 day tempo run
1 day long, slow distance run
1 day recovery run
2 days strength, 1 can be on your recovery run day, the other on a day off.