Oi!!
Firstly. Big congratulations to Gus on your first half. Great stuff
Secondly. This pace thing is all relative. Yes, I find 7mm easy running. But that's because I've been running for years, 100-120 miles every week with a marathon or 2 (or ultra marathon) every weekend. It's not a fair comparison.
I look at all the cyclists on here doing 1200k+ rides and thinking WTF?!?!?! And the same with people who can ride 10m TTs at the 20 min mark. I'll never be able to do that. But then I don't think I'll have the inclination to ever train properly as a cyclist, because I can't find the love for it.
The weight thing is huge within running, and why so many people end up starving themselves. Every pound adds on valuable seconds per mile.
There are some very decent 5k times being thrown around in here, but the whole point of it is just to improve our own times. I've got to find another 4 minutes or so out of my foot to be back where I want to be running, but that doesn't make me a 'proper athlete' lol, just someone whose main sport it is.
However, one thing I will add is that hard running sessions are done HARD. Training runs are just that, and should be run at a training pace. Marathon runners who run say, 7 min miles for the marathon, typically train at 8mm for general running. It's not about trying to break times in routes on training runs! Let's not use me as an example as silly ultra running is a bit different. I'll use my better half. His 5k pace is a smidge over 5 min miling, 10k around 5.15-5.20, half marathon, 5.30 and marathon 5.50ish. His runs during the week (taking out the HARD sessions- tempo/intervals/marathon pace sessions) are all run at 7 min miling or thereabouts.