Not getting faster

fungames wrote:

I've been running since Jan 2023 and I'm still not getting faster. Well I am getting faster just very slowly. In Jan 2023 my easy running pace was 11min/mi. Now in Dec 2023, my easy running pace is still close to 11min/mi. In-fact my mile post 30 year old personal best in Jan 2023 was around 9 minutes. Today it is only 8min and 4 seconds. What is going on? I am 35 years old and I've been running 2 miles every day at anywhere from 8:30-11min pace. If I try to go faster I can't. My HR peaks 170-185 if I try to run 2 miles faster than 8:30. Currently my average time running on feet has been 1.5hr-2.5hrs per week since Jan 2023. Roughly 20 minutes a day every day. I also suplement with biking, rowing and hiking sometimes.

I started running at around age 19 and within 1 month I finished my first 5k in under 30 minutes. I could feel my body was stressed and a month later I was running 25minute 5ks. Actually within 6 months I was running 23 minute 5ks and within a year I broke 21 minutes. Within 2 years, I had broke 20 minutes. Now that I am 15 years older my body does not feel like it is being stressed from any of these runs. How do I make them more stressful? I can't run any faster my HR is capped. My body just isn't receiving the stress it needs to improve and recover. Like I ran a 5k in 33minutes in Jan 2023 and my body didn't feel stressed and my times felt worst the next month. How come I have such polar experiences, when my training is actually the same as it was when I was 19? My main question is, how do I give myself a new level of stress so I can improve?

Please help, anyone? Thanks,

Fungames

mclovin96 wrote:

fungames wrote:

I've been running since Jan 2023 and I'm still not getting faster. Well I am getting faster just very slowly. In Jan 2023 my easy running pace was 11min/mi. Now in Dec 2023, my easy running pace is still close to 11min/mi. In-fact my mile post 30 year old personal best in Jan 2023 was around 9 minutes. Today it is only 8min and 4 seconds. What is going on? I am 35 years old and I've been running 2 miles every day at anywhere from 8:30-11min pace. If I try to go faster I can't. My HR peaks 170-185 if I try to run 2 miles faster than 8:30. Currently my average time running on feet has been 1.5hr-2.5hrs per week since Jan 2023. Roughly 20 minutes a day every day. I also suplement with biking, rowing and hiking sometimes.

I started running at around age 19 and within 1 month I finished my first 5k in under 30 minutes. I could feel my body was stressed and a month later I was running 25minute 5ks. Actually within 6 months I was running 23 minute 5ks and within a year I broke 21 minutes. Within 2 years, I had broke 20 minutes. Now that I am 15 years older my body does not feel like it is being stressed from any of these runs. How do I make them more stressful? I can't run any faster my HR is capped. My body just isn't receiving the stress it needs to improve and recover. Like I ran a 5k in 33minutes in Jan 2023 and my body didn't feel stressed and my times felt worst the next month. How come I have such polar experiences, when my training is actually the same as it was when I was 19? My main question is, how do I give myself a new level of stress so I can improve?

Please help, anyone? Thanks,

Fungames

Whenever a friend asks me advice for running faster I always ask them how much they can run in one run. If it is less than 5k I just tell them to get there and then come back to me. There is very little you can improve if your longest run is 2 miles long.

VIT wrote:

this is a silly discussion. do folks really think the answer to being a slow wannabe distance runner is "run even further?" ha. to me if you run 8-11 min miles your issue is generally basic fitness or the absence of speed work. get in shape. run something shorter than 2 miles. run windsprints. run quarter-mile intervals.

to me one of the routine jogger mistakes i see is folks who haven't run much wanting to do 5ks. to me get fit at and master short distances before longer ones. no one who wants to be a swimmer shows up at the pool and does a mile or half-mile swim for time to start. you master doing one trip down the pool with proper technique. you build your endurance. this also makes it more likely you have some speed to go further, as you are fitter when you do that. you don't start with linear algebra, you take college algebra, geometry, trig/precal, cal.

i mean, before i did XC, i was a track guy who ran up to 400m, and who occasionally ran the mile for a fitness test in athletic period. i got to where i was top handful on the mile with the guys who were on XC. they then asked me to run XC.

fungames wrote:

This quoted post has been removed.

What are you talking about? Everyone before VIT was talking about running piss slow and run+walking lol. No one ever said general fitness i.e. running much faster than mile race pace at distances less 1mile, doing cross sports etc lmao. I missed that about 400s, because I have some people in the past telling me to run 400s piss slow when they say run 400s lol. They want me to run it at like 8minute pace or something so slow. No one specifically said run 400s at 7:30 pace+2.5% incline, I didn't even know I was capable of that lol. I felt like I could go faster actually lol. I finished with a lot left in the tank and no lung burn. Running 400s is not very specific either, Mcmillanrunning wants me to run them slower than mile race pace and no incline which is way too slow for me and why its not helped me in the past. To be fair no one really told me what to do, I figured it out myself when I watched a youtube video+combining comon sense.

Telling someone to run 400s,600s,800s, is not specific at all without proper pacing lol.