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 use the nose-breathe-in-for-3-steps and mouth-breathe-out-for-2-steps which seems to work for me. If I find myself struggling and notice I’m not doing this then starting seems to calm my breathing again. I can just about do it without thinking now. I definitely struggle with the leg stamina thing though. Only been running regularly (3x week) for 8 months.
Thanks. I’ve been using one breathe in and out every 4 steps.