Lifelong athlete. 37yr old male. College baseball player. Have been lifting weights for 15 years. Very consistent with my diet, in fact I have my diet dialed in and track calories eat nothing but whole foods.
I’ve been running for over a year, off and on due to calf and achilles injuries but mostly on. I am on week 10 of a 20-week half marathon plan.
If you look at me, I look very fit. People assume I am very fit because I have decent muscle mass and I’m pretty lean (around 10-11%bf right now). But I really struggle running. I just ran a 7-miler for my long run and it killed me. A freaking 12:53 pace, started at 5am and finished around 6:30am. I am deliberately running in zone 2 to build my endurance base using my Garmin watch and chest strap. I couldn’t have run any faster if I wanted to. Running so slow but my average heart rate was 149bpm. All of my other health factors are very good. 48bpm resting heart rate. 7-8 hours of sleep a night. Weight lifting 3 days a week. Running 3 days a week. All blood work in January was great.
Before I focused on my endurance I got my mile time down to 7:33 at around 80-90% effort. I just feel like I should have a better base by now and even though building the mileage takes time I feel like I’m way too slow for how long I’ve been running.
Am I doing something wrong? Any advice or feedback for me?
A few thoughts for you, OP:
1). Depending on where you are in the world it’s hot as fuck right now. For me, this morning was miserable. I kept my pace easy, I took a couple breaks, but I hit my miles. Sometimes the summer is something that you survive and then enjoy the endurance gains in the fall.
2). What’s your typical volume? Is a 7-mile run more than 25% of your weekly volume? If it is, you might scale that back. Overall, for a new runner, the most important thing is building your weekly volume. And it should all be easy. Try to get to 35 comfortable miles a week before you add in workouts or anything else. These will help, but not nearly as much as just running more. Specificity is a thing, after all.
3). Do you like running? I’m not going to try and talk you out of something that I really enjoy, but sometimes I take a brain break and swim, or ride my bike. I usually come back pretty refreshed. If you’re just beat, maybe give that a shot?
Thanks for the feedback.
Yes, in the Texas Heat even at 5am it’s about 88F and sometimes 90%+ humidity. It’s nasty.
The last 4 weeks average is 10 miles a week. So, not much volume.
I want to enjoy running. I enjoy almost all fitness activities. I really enjoy improving performance. Even though I don’t “love” running, I like it enough and want to be good at it enough that I’ll stick with it. I’m the type of person that obsessed over a goal or something I’m passionate about.
Ok. If you enjoy fitness and want to run, I’m gonna be real with you.
Everybody struggles with heat. I don’t really have much more to say about it than that. Maybe give yourself a little grace. You got out there and you logged your miles. Nice. 👍🏻
At ten miles a week you don’t need a long run. Certainly not one that’s 70% of your weekly volume. Two 3 mile runs and one 4 mile run are your jam right now. Next week, add a mile. One 3 and two 4s. The week after that, add a mile. Four 3s. The next week, three 3s and a 4. And so on.
The key here is to build volume responsibly. No more than a 10% increase (or one mile) a week. This will help give your tendons, ligaments, and bones the time they need to get stronger. That process takes longer than you’d think.
Keep building up, slowly, until you get to 35 miles a week. Feel free to set aside nonsense like “zones” or “workouts” or anything else. These don’t matter to you now. It’s just you and the road. You keep your runs easy by asking yourself “is this hard?” If you ever think it is, slow down. Your pace doesn’t matter at all either. Only the miles and staying healthy.
Hollar back at me once you get to 35.
Thanks for the support. I’m going to take your advice but I just wanted to add that I’m on week 10 of building. It started with two 2 miles and a 3, and built up each week. I’ll just keep trucking along.
I’m very similar to you (I do actually love running though) in that I enjoy being good at sports, and challenging myself. I’m going to agree with the person above.
I’m usually one of those perky happy looking runners, and average an 8-8:30 pace on my big elevation change/most taxing runs. It hasn’t even been hot (by my standards) here, but it’s been EXCEPTIONALLY humid for my local (we were just preparing for a hurricane, which we never have here).
I’m STRUGGLING. My average pace on my normal routes is easily 0:30-1:00 per miles slower, and I feel like I’m working a LOT harder. It’s killing me to be slower. It’s messing with my head/confidence, but it’s totally normal. I have to keep telling myself that.
There was one day, immediately after the “hurricane” passed that was significantly cooler, and more importantly, nearly no humidity, and I was FAST, and it was so easy. Just keep with it, you’ll probably start setting PRs once the weather shifts to cooler/less humid.
I’m pretty new to running myself but I definitely noticed a big drop of overall performance during the heat wave the last couple days.
I’m listening to goa and psytrance while running as it has the same bpm as my heart and it’s intended to cause a disassociation between mind and body which I think helps me ignoring some pain.
Great set of questions that nailed the core problem, heat and lack of volume running. If you don’t have sufficient base running is going to be hard, base, is still going to be a fair amount of miles even at a good fitness level. Also hot is hard too. No matter the fitness level.