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?
This seems crazy considering your details, and I would ensure you are hydrated and sugared... But if you are struggling in zone 2, then you aren't ready for zone 2.
You might need to be walking, then walking with short jog stretches (100 yards?)
You should ever be involuntarily in distress or fighting to continue.
Well, I'm not in distress or struggling necessarily from a cardio standpoint. It's my knees, ankles, and calves that seems to wear down. Granted, I could be running too fast for my real zone 2 since I'm using my watch and HR strap and not a lactate test, but I recover from my runs pretty quickly in my 5 Min cool down walk.