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?
For me heat & humidity would kill my endurance/pace, so i would focus on running in the winter (more bike/swim in hot months)
However since you run in the AM try raw dogging your run. Leave the Garmin and all accessories at home, and roll out.
Sometimes I would get way too over focused on what goals I wanted to achieve, and then seem to plateau without hitting them. That's when I would "reset" my mental run. Clear out the cobwebs and just hit one foot in front of the other.
Remember that every run you are ahead of the game period.
Remember that training plans are generally made up for the average athlete, and each one of us may need a different way of training. (flat terrain? hills? dirt or paved roads, etc.)
Fair point. I'm considering getting a coach but I want to try and improve as much as I can by myself. My distance is improving, so I guess that would say my endurance is improving, but I'm so slow. I feel like people just getting into exercise and people who are very unhealthy and unfit can probably run at the same pace I'm at.