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?
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.