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?
If you didn’t eat anything before and are not used to morning runs it can be very hard on your body energy wise. Your glycogen levels could be low. When I first started doing long morning runs when the last time I ate was the night before I’d hit a wall. Eventually my body adapted and I was able to run 18 miles on an empty stomach. If you’re not trying to lose weight or train your body to operate with lower glycol levels there is not much of a reason to run on an empty stomach.
Thanks. I’m trying to loose body fat and improve my running. I have a good amount of lean muscle, 170lbs at 5ft 9in and around 10% body fat. You make a valid point and maybe my body hasn’t adapted yet. I am very used to training fasted, though, just not running it’s been weightlifting.
I’m no expert in cell biology but I get a completely different feeling from running hungry than I do from weight lifting hungry. For whatever reason I can do plenty of anaerobic lifting in the morning but running without any carbohydrates is much harder. That said, I can only take a very small amount of food when I run off I don’t want discomfort, e.g. a small amount of applesauce and a slice of deli ham or something.