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?
I have nothing to add to this other than to tell you I'm in the exact same boat as you. I played football and rugby in highschool and I was a really good athlete, and I was super lean, 6'0 and about 175 pounds.
I could not fucking run long distances to save my life, whenever we did runs in practices I was struggling back with all the fat dudes, where the other skinny guys like me were not even breaking a sweat finishing so fast. I was the fastest sprinter on the team too, so it wasn't my athleticism holding me back or anything.
I've never really figured out why, I think I might have some form of asthma or something.
So similar. In high school and college ball, I was ALWAYS at the back of the pack with the "fat guys". I have wondered if I have something biologically that makes it so, or if I'm just a punk and need to suck it up and run more to get better. I guess I'll find out, lol!
Another random piece to add, maybe it will help you out too - I have ridiculously flat feet. Like literally no arch in the slightest, and it kinda fucked my knees and hips up a little bit. My feet also naturally point outwards when I'm standing too, so I'm wondering if maybe my running mechanics are fucked because of that, and maybe it takes me way more energy to jog than a person with normal feet? But I still don't really get it, because like I said, I was a faster sprinter than 99% of people I met, only track dudes were faster than me.
Coincidentally, I have small, wide feet.