I am a beginner, am I doing something wrong?

Sounds like you're doing fine considering your weekly mileage.

It goes against the conventional (and probably correct) letsrun wisdom but if you have any interest in a half marathon or marathon you could aim for that. Reason being that a marathon plan will call for a lot more weekly miles and a lot of easy miles will make you faster at all distances. Also, don't obsess over HR... 160 is no big deal if you have a max of 195. If it feels easy and you can carry on a conversation in complete sentences while running, it's easy enough.

Of course conventional wisdom says build more speed at shorter distances before you go for a half marathon or marathon. That's going to require more structured training in the form reps/intervals/tempo runs. In my case, that all sounded like too much when I was starting out and logging a bunch of easy miles was well.... easy!

Give it some time.

Just run and pick some races you get excited about whatever that might be. Do not focus just on 5k or 10k times. Maybe you are better in longer races? In any case long or short, it doesn't matter. You have to enjoy it, that all what matters.

The longest I've ever ran was a 21k at around 2month into running. However, since I didn't really prepare myself for that distance I ended up bonking at around 16k, making the rest of the 'run' rather unpleasant and ended up with 2:40. I still have a mental bias for running that distance again lol.

I like the feeling of striding at around 6-7min mile. I wish I could comfortably cruise at that speed for a prolonged period of time. I've entertained the idea of signing up for races but the idea does not sound exciting, plus it usually costs money. I always jog at night and pace myself with music. Running against time and keeping a personally satisfying pace by myself is in itself rewarding for me. It's unfortunate that a 6-7min mile pace would currently be considered attempted suicide for me.

Good to hear that my HR isn't too alarming. In terms of feel I do feel pretty comfortable even sitting at 170bpm, but I keep worrying that if I run all my distances at these heart rates I wouldn't be letting it recover like other people with their zone2 runs.

I initially started running with the idea that I want to be fast at 5k since I never pictured myself running more than that, but after running for a bit I realized that a big portion of 5k is not really ran at a sustainable pace so I felt like 10k would help me with obtaining some endurance focusing on being aerobic but not worry much about attrition so now I try to make 10k my measuring stick.

After attempting a very poorly planned half marathon once I feel like its mentally different to jog those distances and above. With my current physical capacity I can't say I enjoy dragging out a 6:45min/km 'race pace' for over 2hours. Maybe I just need to run more to get in the groove.

First off, you are improving, so no need to be discouraged. Developing the aerobic system is a multiyear process.

Are you doing any type of training plan, or just running easy every day?

5-20 miles a week is fine for basic fitness, but is not enough to see improvements in times. At best it works out to about 30-35 minutes a day of activity or ~4 hours a week. If you actually want to see improvements in race times, you need to have around 7-10 hours a week of training (between running, xtrain, weights, etc).

Weird advice about doing a 1/2 of a full--no need to subject yourself to that. You'd be running 5 hours (doesn't sound fun to me at all).

The problem with flying HR is due to the fact that you have a weak heart muscle and weak cardiovascular system in general. It's normal situation for a beginner who have never trained before seriously. I've been there and have gone through this as I also started running late.

If you want to improve cardio significantly you will need to dedicate some time to this and go at low HR for long time as this is purely function of time thing. Pace and mileage is not important at this point. It will take some determination and discipline but in 2-3 months you can improve significantly. After that you will be able to introduce quality workouts into your training and won't need to return to this boring training anymore.

What you need to do for these two to three months is do 100-120 min jogs three to four times per week. Day between runs most be day off. Pace must be so slow that your HR (taking into account your max HR of 195) does not exceed 150 bpm for first 2-3 weeks, 145 for second 2-3 weeks, 140 for third 2-3 weeks and 135 for final 2-3 weeks. So in 8-12 weeks you will have new engine and ready for distance training.

I mus warn you that this is boring AF 2-3 months but the good thing is you will need to do this only once in your life. Afterwards you'll be able to actually run at different paces and different HRs and will be able to do real workouts and recovery runs in between.

Hey OP

This above may or may not be true. HR is extremely variable among individuals. I have a high max HR (just over 200 bpm). Most of my marathons (both failures and successes) have been run at an average HR of 180-182 bpm. In my marathon last April, my average was 184 and went into the 190s at the end, so your HR range is not unprecedented.

As for the extremely low HR work, I tried that too. You can look up the ideas of Maffetone. I'm agnostic on that. I live in a pretty warm climate, so too much of my blood goes to cooling my body and elevates my HR even at a pretty low level of effort. Still, I stuck with it for over 6 months, and I hated every minute of it. If I gained anything in terms of cardio, I lost in terms of muscle/skeletal because I couldn't run fast enough to tax the legs. Worst marathon experience ever... cramping... pain... but as I say, I'm agnostic.

Anyway, I started just a little older than you and I'm still "getting faster" even in my early 50s. There's time.

Don't do this. Running 2 hours every other day makes absolutely no sense.

You've already chopped 6 minutes off of your time. Keep building with consistent sustainable increase in overall training volume. A long run of 100-120 minutes once per week makes sense, but not 4x a week.

I always say, ignore the HR numbers and run by feel. Especially for a beginner. All you need to do is go out the door in any direction for 20 mins and run back in less time than you went out, and keep your pace such that you can say a sentence or two without gasping, take a day or two off a week, and you will see drastic improvements. Notice I am suggesting to run by time not distance, this way you are not artificially limiting yourself to a specific distance and you will end up running faster and further when you don't know how far you've gone, and if you are sick or not feeling well you just go by time and run less distance, to maintain the same effort. So basically I am telling you to throw your garmin away :) Just kidding, obviously it will be useful once you get into doing proper workouts like tempo runs and intervals but for now you just need to develop a base to jump off from. As a previous poster mentioned, it is work done over the course of years. Once in a while I take a couple months of very light running, and when I come back it doesn't take me long to get back to where I was, because I have 15 years of running under my belt. You may also think about weight, I think most male runners your height will be in the < 150lb range. But don't get crazy about it, but something to consider. As you run more and develop your body's efficiency often your general metabolic rate will decrease, so you can actually end up gaining weight from running if you don't watch it carefully.

5-20 miles per week is not much. That means only running once in some weeks and seldom more than 4 times.

You do not need to run massive 100 mile weeks like elite runners now.

But it helps a lot to slowly build up to run about one hour, almost daily.

Then later try to give it a good structure of quality and recovery. Maybe three key sessions each week. One long run (might start at 70 min and build up to 2 hours over several month). A tempo run (concentrated effort for 20-40 min). A workout (long intervals, short fast intervals, hills,...).

After a year or two you might be able to run a 20 min 5 k and a 10 k in the low 40ies or even faster. Then you can decide if it is worth to further increase volume and intensity if you have fun and like to further improve.

And of course body weight is an issue. You are at the upper end of normal level. Perfect for a sedentary person but not for an athlete.

An elite runner at your height would be 130 lbs. Even with decent muscular development you should be able to go down to around 150-155.

If you have never been fast before, running a lot of slower miles even at relatively high heart rates doesn't necessarily translate into screaming fast race times. My advice would be to follow some sort of standard training plan that has you doing hard workouts with interspersed with hard workouts and the occasional long run. I think you'll find that the amount of improvement you'll get for your time spent training is much higher if you are doing well paced workouts than just pounding miles. The key to good workouts is that the paces have to be determined by your current fitness (not goal fitness) and since they will break you down a little, it's critical that the days between workouts be easy enough that you are truly recovering between hard days. Those recovery days are the only times I'd pay much attention to heart-rate. If you are tired from a hard workout, doing your usual run at 165bpm the next day is a recipe for disaster. Make sure the days after hard days are easy. I'd say 145bpm or less even if that means the easy days have be slow and possibly short. A book like the Daniels' Running Formula gives examples of workouts and has tables to determine your pace from current race fitness. I wouldn't necessarily follow it too closely (for me anyway, JD has more workouts in a week than I can handle) but it at least gives you an idea of how to structure workouts for a given fitness level.

meant to say hard workouts should be interspersed among easier days. Personally, I find hard, easy, easy, hard, easy, easy, ... works best with a long run thrown in every few weeks.

LOL sure you don't understand how myocardial development is done for beginners. You say makes no sense? Guess why cyclists are going around on 4-5 hour rides... Of course the OP can continue jogging around for years but if he wants to improve fast over hobby jogger level and move to real training he will have to develop heart muscle. Better to do it now than after few years are wasted. Btw taking off 6 min from 33 min 5k can be done by simply losing 10 lb and no training whatsoever is necessary.

Keep going wrote:

First off, you are improving, so no need to be discouraged. Developing the aerobic system is a multiyear process.

....

Weird advice about doing a 1/2 of a full--no need to subject yourself to that. You'd be running 5 hours (doesn't sound fun to me at all).

OP said, "my best 5k is around 27:30" That predicts a ~4:25 marathon. Assuming no improvements.

I only threw it out there because any half marathon or marathon training plan is going to have you run a lot more than 20 miles/week. Getting the weekly mileage up will help all distances. Different folks find different things motivational. I wanted to run a marathon as a bucket list item before I turned 50. That goal got me off the couch. I ran a 5k, 10k, half, then full. Then I went back and worked on speed starting with the 5k and working back up the distances.

YMMV

Stop focusing on the HR BS.

Run more and lose 20+ lbs. For a serious runner at your height 140-45 is normal. For an elite, it would be 10 lbs below that. If your goal is to run fast you're carrying too much weight and extra muscle does not help in a 10K.

qw wrote:

Keep going wrote:

Don't do this. Running 2 hours every other day makes absolutely no sense.

You've already chopped 6 minutes off of your time. Keep building with consistent sustainable increase in overall training volume. A long run of 100-120 minutes once per week makes sense, but not 4x a week.

LOL sure you don't understand how myocardial development is done for beginners. You say makes no sense? Guess why cyclists are going around on 4-5 hour rides... Of course the OP can continue jogging around for years but if he wants to improve fast over hobby jogger level and move to real training he will have to develop heart muscle. Better to do it now than after few years are wasted. Btw taking off 6 min from 33 min 5k can be done by simply losing 10 lb and no training whatsoever is necessary.

Please direct me to evidence of this approach.

Thanks for all the feedback. Looks like there are some conflicting opinions here but at least most people seem to suggest that more mpw will be beneficial as well as losing weight.

I just want to clarify that I don't intend to be an elite runner by any means, or even a good runner by this forum's standard. I don't think I will be willing to lower my weight much below 160 at any time regardless of the time advantage it will provide. I simply want to be able to move to carry my own weight relatively efficiently and that includes upper body strength. I will try to digest all the suggestions to take a look at training plans to see what might make sense to me with my current schedule. I will visit this thread frequently for to do some updates and maybe get some feedback over time.

PS. No please don't make me throw my Garmin away. It's my first watch of any kind in years and I don't go anywhere without it to fuel my obsession for data.

+1 to run more. 5mpw is nothing. 20mpw is barely something in terms of running training.

+1 to dont overthink heart rate. People are variable. I have a friend who was a solid, but not elite runner, PRs in the low 1:50s, 3:50s (1500), sub 15, etc. His HR on easy runs is like 175 bpm when he is running 645 pace. He just has a crazy high max HR for some reason. Meanwhile, I struggle to get my HR above 140 without it feeling like a tempo pace. My max is more like 185, maybe 190 if I'm doing pure speed work.

+1 to dont over think the weight. It sounds like your goal is general fitness, not just running. So set a target bmi of in the middle of normal, maybe a little higher if you want to carry a little more muscle. Just get it slowly down below overweight, so get under 174 for your height. If you were serious about running, then yeah, being more lean is important, but that isnt your goal. Do some pushups, situps, tae kwon do, whatever other exercise floats your boat.

+1 to keeping the Garmin. If you find it fun to play with and look at data, that's kind of the point, right? Just dont let it get in the way of enjoying being out on a run by overly obsessing over it during the run.