Consistent running for one year, no improvements, can't even finish workouts now

That sucks, man. It really looks to me like you are doing everything right and have a great attitude. 6'3, 185 is fine for non-elite running. You definitely "deserve" serious improvements.

I am not a coach, but I tend to agree with the folks suggesting some weight training. Tinkering with your training program would mostly be nickle-and-diming since it is already so good.

Thanks for all the replies so far! My takeaways for now:

I will drop the strides

I will get a blood test

I will incorporate some strength and mobility work, though only at home, because I don't have access to a gym

I will continue training like this for a month, and after that consider changing my methods drastically, like the 8 minute mile pace "easy" runs, or the lower volume and strength training based ones.

To answer some questions, we have had a very mild summer so far, compared to typical sub tropical ones we usually get here, still, I try to get out early, usually when it's less then 70 f.

During my easy runs, I definitely don't feel out of breath, I can talk easily, my heart rate is less than 160, even at the end of them, but my legs always feel sore

Regarding fat, I don't think I have that much to loose, the percentage was a guess, and my abs are not visible, but close.

And who is this David? Do I have a chance of beating him? Maybe a race like that is just what I need ?

The PRs aren't recent but ... OP states 5K is 23:45 on a hilly course. He should then be running a 1/2M in the region of 1hr50. On a flatter 5K, you could expect both those to be quicker.

Yet his 1/2M PR is 1hr57 which is only worth about a 25:30 5K.

Because his 5K is way faster than his 1/2M times suggest possible, it's clear he's speed-trained and lacks the endurance.

I believe what's happening during the training week is his easy runs are SO easy that they're allowing him to recover fully and get through the hard workouts. And there's no aerobic development going on.

So it's a case of working on the endurance side until that improves. No amount of speedwork is going to make him faster because there is a limit to how much lactate clearance and tolerance the body can create. The past year shows that.

I've been in this situation loads of times and eventually I realised that I can jog myself out of it within six weeks.

i don't agree. both ends need to be trained. most new runners are not going to have 1/2s that match up to 5ks. Their 5k won't match their mile, etc.

That doesn't mean you don't have some strength deficiencies that could be fixed by running fast. He is most likely broken on both ends.

Rakott Kaposzta wrote:

During my easy runs, I definitely don't feel out of breath, I can talk easily, my heart rate is less than 160, even at the end of them, but my legs always feel sore

You must have posted while I was writing my last reply.

Your heart-rate shouldn't even be close to 160 on an easy run at 10+ min/mile. It's another confirmation that your endurance needs to be worked on.

I will revise my advice to ... ditch all the speedwork for six weeks. Jog easily. Try to keep heart-rate below 150 initially. Lower if possible. This of course assumes you have a decent chest strap heart-rate monitor. Wrist-based ones are a waste of time.

A mitochondrial cycle is six weeks but call it two months to give some leeway. If you don't feel any better after that or see lower heart-rates or legs not hurting, then by all means check all the other stuff out. But I'd stake money on two months of jogging sorting all this out.

Keep us updated!

One of my favorite Arthur Lydiard quotes is, "You can never run too slowly. But you can run too fast." But there are limits to everything and maybe you've passed the limits of that quote. When I was in grade school it was exactly a mile from the back exit of the school to our house. If I walked fast I could get home in less time than you're running a mile in your easy workouts and I was NOT any kind of endurance athlete at the time. Not long after that I started a high school track career where I never ran a mile in better than six minutes.

Please don't take this as an insult but if I was walking home from grade school in less time than you're running most of your miles it's hard to think that you're actually running. I can see no reason why a healthy 19 year old should be running anywhere near that slowly. I don't want to prescribe a pace but I'd think something like 8:00-8:30 pace, certainly no slower than 9:00, is much more appropriate most of the time. Yeah, I know there's probably some formula that tells you your easy runs should be X minutes per mile slower than your 5 km pace or something but if that formula is limiting you to 11:00 pace it's not a good formula.

You may say that you can't possibly run that fast for the 40 or so miles you're doing a week or for that 12 mile run and I'd agree. So forget about covering that kind of distance. Run much faster (really, as a one time high school runner who couldn't run under 6:00 for an all out mile I assure you 8:00-9:00 pace is not fast running) and keep the runs to 30-40 minutes until you are comfortable at that kind of pace and only then start adding distance. If you cannot manage that pace for the whole 30-40 minutes stop and walk for very short time until you don't need to do that. If you really find running only 30-40 minutes a day isn't enough for you do a second run. Slow training is fine but there's difference between running and plodding. I'm as big an advocate of running high mileage as anyone who posts here but you need to balance pace and distance and your balance here is way off and not heavy enough on the pace side.

HRE just gave you the best advice on this thread so far.

I thought this was David wrote:

Coevett wrote:

We should organize a race between you and David.

Loser has to accept it's over.

Excellent!

Yes, but the race has to be who can maintain 11:30 pace for the longest time without speeding up.

Jokes aside, yes I agree that HRE hit it on the head. I was about to post a reply saying something similar.

Hi Rakott,

I am almost exactly the same build (6'3, 195, but ~175 at my best). I had a similar progression curve when I started, with my first 5k being ~25 min at 15, and then dropping 1-2 min per year. My progression was very slow, until I finished high school. I ended up running in college with a PR of 15:20 in the 5K, and a marathon PR of 2:40.

As a bigger runner, at least for me, I felt improvement came way slower than for my skinnier friends. What happens a lot for tall runners is that our stride is slower, this was my problem. A lot of my improvement happened when my cadence increased over time. Went from ~150 to ~170 steps per minute on easier runs, with race pace being ~180-185. This is really hard to do.

If you have the same problem, I would recommend for a couple of weeks doing fewer classic workouts, but 2 days a week focus on stride based workouts. Maybe start with 10-12 strides (~100 m) with a 1 min break, building to 18-20 strides. Focus on fast cadence and relaxed form. On two other days focus on increasing your cadence 5-10% over your baseline. This should be like a steady state run, but cadence and running smooth is your goal. Once you feel like you are getting the hang of moving your feet, you can start introducing one normal workout a week.

Hope this helps, good luck

I'm gonna almost second this advice. Based off of what I've read, I would cut the running back and cut out intensity for the time being. I may even suggest walking instead of running some days. Based off of paces you've mentioned, the running you do may be the "speed" workout in itself. Maybe do 30-40 minutes of running every other day and 30-40 minutes of walking every other day. Then slowly add running into those walking sessions and after a month or two you'll have built up the aerobic capacity to run regularly

Okay, the heart rate reading was from wrist based monitor, in the next month or two, I should be able to get a chest strap, already had interest before this thread.

Regarding walking, I think that it wouldn't be really a stimulus, before the lockdown, I walked 30 minutes during my commute, with a brisk pace of 4 miles per hour(Though that is nothing compared to HRE's super walking speed). And also I do a 20+ mile hike in the mountains about twice a year, and that is not too challenging, even the uphills.(Did a lot of hiking when I was in primary school)

Because I don't have any races to perform well at, so I have a lot of time to experiment, so first, I will try the 8 minute mile base building period, then if it doesn't work, I will go back and try the other stuff out, like the slow base building, and the stride rate training.

So, I did my first run this morning with the new plan, 30 minutes with an avarege pace of 9 minutes per mile. I started out strong, ran the first mile in 8 minutes, then started slowly drifting towards a pace of around 8:40. At 18 minutes, I had to take a one minute break, in order to get back to the previous pace. The gradual slowdown started again, and had to take a one minute walking break at 26 minutes. 100 feet of elevation change in total, the avarege bpm was 161, but this was measure of course by my watch.

I have to get in more practice with this pace, had to look a lot at my watch to correctly maintain it. And also, I'm still unsure of what the effort should be during uphill running. But so far, this feels promising, and my legs didn't feel more beat up then after an hour with 11 minute pace, maybe they even felt a bit better(!?) though my breathing was really labored by the end.

I will probably put a one minute break at 10 mintues, and another at 20 until I get better, in order to get a more consistent pace.

Rest is more important than training. Find out if you are getting the amount of rest given the workload you are trying to do. Don't worry about numbers all the time, but listen to your body. Everytime you get set to do a hard workout, you should feel fresh.

To get faster, work on shorter races. If you want to run a faster 10k, work on your 5k. If you want to run a faster 5k, train for a 1500.

I'm a big fan of time based intervals, that is: don't measure both time and distance in training. That is a race.

Measuring both time and distance in intervals means you start evaluating your session as "good/bad". But you should only think about races that way. You have to figure out whether the workouts you are doing are too tiring given your current conditioning. This would also be true if you were anemic, etc.

As far as specific workouts, Suleiman Nyambui used to run workouts like this: Run hard 10 minutes, jog 5 minutes. It is hard to run 10 minutes hard with a five minute recovery four times in a row, so work up to it.

Don't pay attention to how far you are running in the 10 minutes, just pay attention to the effort and maintaining the same elevated pace for 10 minutes, then jog to recover for five. You can do the same thing with five minute intervals and a two and a half minute recovery. Fartlek also works well, and allows you to learn how to manage mixing up paces.

Run a hard day/easy day program, with three hard days a week (if you aren't racing), and one very easy day.

When you run faster, try to get used to taking fast, short strides and a quick turnover. Avoid bounding or overstriding. If you know anyone who races bicycles, you will find that they always ride in what seems like a lower gear and spin. Try to have the same feeling when you are running faster paces. It works.

I am nearly 20 years older than you and about the same height and weight but am quite a bit faster. I don't think you're running enough nor fast enough. 11 miles per min is too slow. People are scared to up the pace because they watch too many youtube videos about "slowing down to get faster" but that wisdom does not apply to people who are already slow.

Ditch the workouts and run 5-6 days a week 45-60 min at a comfortable and moderate pace. Do not use a HR monitor if you are. Do not use Strava as it messes with new runner's minds. If you want to have a long run, go for 90min every couple of weekends. Unless you are running for a specific race in 12-18 weeks time, do not use a "plan." Just get out and run.

New runners have way too much info now due to social media and it screws up the process.

Make sure you specifically ask for them to test for your ferritin. Some doctors are clueless. If you want to be simple about it, you can use a private blood testing lab. In my area, there is a lab that does the ferritin test for under $20 and you get results within 24 hours.

I highly recommend you do this.

I would reduce the mileage of your 6 mile easy days to 3 or 4 miles to make sure you are truly fresh for your quality days. If you want, you can add another 2-3 miles at the end of your Thursday and Saturday to keep the overall weekly mileage the same. Bill Dellinger's Oregon system often added a 30 minute steady run after their track workout.

It doesn't make sense to me to run your easy days at what is essentially your 5K race pace which would make it another quality day and then burn you out. IF one wants to maintain the rhythm of faster pace running on an easy day, I recommend Igloi style intervals such as 8-16x150 with 50 jog recovery - "easy swing" (5-10k pace) for the 1st 3, "good pick up" (1 mile - 5K pace) for the 4th and repeat to total 8-16 150's. The repeat distances are short to keep blood lactate levels low. You can also just do fartleks of 30 seconds with 30 second jog recovery.

Assuming you are "in season" I would keep backing off on the easy days to as little a 20 minute untimed jogs until you can fully execute your quality days and then build back the mileage and pace of your easy days. If you're coming off a break, you're better off rebuilding your base with aerobic runs with some threshold and fartleks.

Ok. I'm 41 but my HM PR from last year is approx the same as you. I started hobby jogging 3 years ago and i'm roughly on 15 mpw. I keep improving even if i didn't race since last fall.

I never really tried a 5K TT or race but i guestimate my level around 25, so slower than you. My conclusion is that you lack endurance so your aerobic system is probably weaker than mine. Your training easy pace looks too fast to me. 6 miles in 1:05 isn't realy hard, but i'm guessing you couldn't keep that rythm for 4:30, which is pretty much what would be expected for the first ventilatory threashold. So that isn't an easy pace for you, that is a comfortably hard pace and that trains your anaerobic threashold, not your aerobic one.

So maybe try to run easier most days, maybe keeping short strides at the end of the run and do only one 5K-10K paced workout per week. That's what i do. But obviously i'm slow, so maybe listen to faster guys. But being as slow as you, maybe i'm well placed to say your easy pace is faster than it should.

Okay, so blood test is in, ferritin is 10 micrograms per liter, iron is 6 micromole per liter. My test says both of these are below the reference minimum values. Apart from fixing this, should I change my training?

1) Agree rest is equally/more important than training. That's when improvements take place, not during the workout!

2) I would say it's more like the other way around for most runners - want a better Mile, train for the 5k. Want a better 5k, train for the 10k. Runners generally lack the aerobic endurance to run longer races at their VDOT value, it's rare that someone doesn't have the speed to run a certain time over a longer distance.

3) Agree, Fartleks/running for time are great, especially if there are soft trails available without much traffic on them. I'm not a fan of doing them on the track tho, I think if you get on the track then make it count and do a workout you can compare with in the future, so similar rests and exact distances/splits. But I'd only use a few of these workouts, and do most on trails or hills.

4) Cadence is individual, in both cycling and running. Mo Farah was once the best 5k/10k runner in the world and average 168 cadence in a 10k as short guy (only on the home stretch he increased to 190+). Speed is a function of stride length and cadence - Farah obviously had phenomenal stride length and was fast despite doing long, loping strides. But it worked for him on the track. On a XC course it would be totally different, since he would waste a lot of energy with his long, loping strides and someone with cadence in the 190s or above would be a lot more efficient.