I'm running regularly with little to no improvement. Help?

Slow Guy 35 wrote:

I have 2 children under 3 so only have time for 5 running days a week. My usual schedule looks like this

Tues: 8 miles (workout day)

Wed: 8 miles

Friday: 8 miles

Sat: 6 miles

Sun: 10 - 12 miles

i would change how you are doing workouts. each of those three workouts you are doing can be their own day. Don't worry about doing them every week. Spread it over 2 weeks. 5x1000 one week. Tempo run another week. 200s and 400s could be put into one of your mileage days, or scrap them for now and just do strides.

have you been 192 since you started running, or have you lost some? I would think you would lose some weight on 40 or 50 mile weeks.

Was around 205 when I started. Lost over the first couple of months but been at this weight for a month or so now.

I don't have a bad diet ( 3meals a day. no snacks, but a few beers most weekends), but i'm mostly sedentary. I work from home and the runs are the only exericse I get.

So the reason I have been doing my workout in that structure is because I checked a calculator which said my times were: 10km around 8mins/mile. 5km 7:45min/mile, 3km 7:30 mins a mile. So I incorporated all of these 3 paces with 5 reps each. The 200m at 3k pace I usually do a lot faster than 7:30 a mile as the 1 min rest feels too long

Slow Guy 35 wrote:

So the reason I have been doing my workout in that structure is because I checked a calculator which said my times were: 10km around 8mins/mile. 5km 7:45min/mile, 3km 7:30 mins a mile. So I incorporated all of these 3 paces with 5 reps each. The 200m at 3k pace I usually do a lot faster than 7:30 a mile as the 1 min rest feels too long

Yeah that's way too much hard work to be doing week after week. Especially for a new runner with moderate volume. And if you add regular time trials on top of that, you're probably running the engine way too hot.

If you find yourself out of breath or completely drained after every run you could be pushing your running training too hard. It's something known as over training and it happens when your body is pushed beyond its capability to recover.

Slow Guy 35 wrote:

How do I get faster? Do I just have to run more?

What is wrong is diffciult to say. My guess would be that you overtrain and exhaust yourself with inefficient training.

There are four things that have to improve:

A Fat. You need a diet to reduce the level of fat in your body (unless you are tall and slim) of course)

B VO2max, the volume of oxygen your heart is able to pump into your blood. You have to do specific VO2Max-training to improve it.

C The capillary network. You have to train to expand the capillary network in your muscles so that your muscles improves consumption of oxygen from your blood.

D Muscles. You need a certain volume of muscles to move your body.

How:

1. Diet (if it is needed) addresses A.

2. Follow this training program which addresses B, C and D:

Sunday: Long run, really slow 10 miles.

Tuesday: 4x4 interval training. Follow the details:

Thursday: 4x4 interval training. Follow the details:

Results expected after 7 weeks:

Big. Go see your doctor if you fail to improve.

If you're a 24-min 5K runner then you have lots of untapped potential and for whatever reason the current training isn't working for you.

I remember coaching a 50-year-old guy whose PB was 24mins10 for parkrun and 1hr48 for 1/2M. Within five months he was sub-22min30 and closing in 1hr40 for 1/2M. In the past four years he'd gone from 2hr02 to 1hr48 at 1/2M with inefficient training.

When I first coached him I had to convince him his easy runs were too fast at 8min45/mile. Your 9-9:30 is better than that but still too fast.

I changed his schedule to four days of 30-60mins easy running that initially began at 10min/mile. He judged his Easy pace based on a decent heart-rate monitor. It was initially up in the mid-150s and I got him to start by bringing it under 150 then 145 then within three weeks he was keeping to around 140. The easy pace was then dictated by that and gradually sped up from 10min/mile to the point six months later where he was closing in on 9min/mile. I'm not a fan of HR monitors but it worked in his case.

He began to love his running and his enthusiasm became his downfall as he kept entering races that meant I just kept issuing recovery weeks and 10K / 10M races became his speedwork. Eventually he got a new job and running took a backseat.

He had one workout day per week which was usually marathon-pace / threshold as his goal races were longer distances. We did perhaps four sessions of interval speedwork in the whole period and that was it.

I don't think he was doing more than 35mpw. But I always believe the key was that he unlocked his potential by building the easy runs up from 10min/miles and they naturally got quicker. That then left him fresh enough to do the 1-hour of workout once per week. The two things go hand-in-hand and work in tandem. Easy running on its own won't make you faster, but too many workouts will breakdown the body and leave you without the endurance to race.

TLDR; jog your easy runs and do one workout per week. Everything will naturally get faster.

The Youtube video recommends warm up/cool down and recovery jogging at 50%-60% of max hr. In my experience, most beginners cannot run with a hr that low. I suppose, alternatively, they should only walk?

50-60% of max HR during summer sounds impossible. I can reach that by walking up a hill.

Alfie wrote:

The Youtube video recommends warm up/cool down and recovery jogging at 50%-60% of max hr. In my experience, most beginners cannot run with a hr that low. I suppose, alternatively, they should only walk?

Yes. Intencity 100% guided by hr. If you cannot run then walk. If you cannot walk then crawl. Active recovery is all about burning acid faster than your hr drops.

I'd say as long as you're around 70% you're fine. 50%-60% with a max of 200 is 100-120, which I think I hit before I turn my watch on just because my body is anticipating the run.

Watch Galen Rupp do vo2max specific training. He is just barely jogging between reps as he should: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P2da7ETunf4

Slow Guy 35 wrote:

Until this year I've not ran at all since age 16. Was an average sprinter in my teens. Started running again at the start on the year. Until April all slow miles and got up to 50 miles per week. After April I started to incorporate workouts but I'm not really seeing any improvement in 5k time trials (Always around 24 mins).

Average speed of easy runs 9 - 9.30 mins/mile.

Recent workout. I've done this workout 3 weeks in a row now

5 x 1km @ 8 mins/mile

5 x 400m @ 7.45 mins/mile

5 x 200m @ 7.30 mins/miles

All 1 min standing rest between intervals.

I'm only going to address this, that is, your weekly interval workout. First, drop the 5x1km. It adds too much volume and it doesn't address your need to train your body to handle the movements associated with faster pace.

A common mistake of adult novice runners is to train slow and skip intervals entirely. They never reach this potential for speed. You need to train your muscles and tendons (they do some of the work) to handle the wider range of motion and faster cadence of faster running. You evne need to train your Central Nervous System to run faster. In short, you need to not just run faster, you need your body to become more efficient at running faster.

A better workout for you would be 2 sets of 4x200m w/90-120sec recovery and a lap walk between sets (5-7 minutes). A goal time for these reps might be 37-45 seconds. After you do a couple of reps, you'll get a feel for what time is doable. DO NOT run these all-out. You want to run them hard enough that you're tired halfway through the workout, but slow enough to finish the workout. In short, the goal is to finish the workout without slowing on the last few reps... so don't run them too fast.

Now, this is important, after a few reps, you'll get tired sooner on each rep... 175m, then 150m on the next, then 120m. DO NOT try to run faster or force it. Instead, try to relax by slightly changing your cadence or your armswing or your forward lean. Relax your shoulders and face. Your body needs to learn how to run relaxed and fast. You should notice a significant improvement after you do this workout three weeks in a row.

Once you can do this workout, increase the distance of the reps to 300m. Then, in a month, try 400m reps. Then, you can do 400m reps one week and 200m reps the next. You can gradually increase the number of reps.

This is good advice. Should the recovery of 90-120 secs be passive or active? Should this recovery be the same for the 400s?

good post. people who have been running forever take for granted the need for newbies to work on this aspect of running near the beginning stages.

Have you thought of hiring a world class coach that easily could improve your running?

Walk the recovery. If in doubt as to whether you'll be able to run the next rep at the chosen pace, rest a few seconds more. If you can't run at your chosen pace after 2 1/2 minutes rest, you're done. Stop the workout. You ran too hard and botched the workout. It's a learning process. You'll get it next time. This may sound unnecessary, but it's important. You're training yourself to have the discipline to run the right pace. (In reality, it's more complex than that, but it's a lot to explain so I'll just leave it at that.)

When you move up to 400m reps, rest is 2 to 2 1/2 minutes. If you have to, you can go up to 3 minutes on the last couple of reps, but if you can't maintain pace with that much rest, you're done. The workout is over.