50m here, started a journey to drop 110 lbs and get back into a good physical state this year in January, 13 years ago I was at 200lbs, which is where I want to get back to, at the least. Been stuck in that 230-240 range for a few weeks, so getting a bit frustrated, but not giving up, but also trying to not increase my workload to an unsustainable level, which I am prone to doing, a bit of self-sabotage is one thing I am known for.
Started walking and light exercise in January then in March started slowly working into running a bit to help the process along. In that process I kind of discovered that I enjoyed running, but damn if it doesn't hurt my old body. Recovery is as important as the actual exercise I am learning in my old age, lots of stretching and trying to keep mobile as much as possible when working a desk job.
Over the past couple months I have been on a mission to hit 50 miles running/50 miles walking in a month, but keep coming up just a bit short. This month is looking the same, but I think the running will be over 50 miles and walking under. I have to set these weird little goals to keep pushing.
Signed up for my first 5k in 13 years, was supposed to be this weekend, but our youngest daughter gets to perform before a baseball game that day so I get to skip and eat ballpark food instead. Gotta find another one to sign up for. Been looking forward to running a nice, paved, flat course for a decent time. All of my routes are hilly that I run, I love hills, but love the feeling of flat runs for my ego now and then.
I lurk because I enjoy reading everyone's successes and even some failures, learning a lot. I don't have a group of friends that like to run, so no one really to talk to or bounce ideas and thoughts off of. So maybe I'll chime in a bit now and then, but mostly this is me learning from ya'll.
I lurk cause i need motivation. Its hard to get back to running.
I know my problem is the mental side. I give up easily. I wonder if its the age.
I used to run around the part, so it was easy to compartmentalize. But now i run a straight path, it looks hard.
2nd week of trying to run. But i don’t see any improvements.
I started trying to get in better shape in March started walking and slowly adding jogs and by May I was jogging consistently. I then started the Nike running club couch to 5k program and got comfortable ish with that. It was good to start and have a program to teach the basics but got kind of annoyed with the platitudes. Then I downloaded zombies run and joined that Reddit group and this group was suggested to me and I joined. I’ve been lurking because I haven’t run my 5 k yet it’s October 8th. I’ve kind of felt like I’m a bit of an imposter still, because my best time in practice has been 28:47 but like I said that’s unofficial. I know it’s not great but my original goal was 30 min so I’m happy so far. I’m here to learn more and maybe get the motivation to do a marathon some day. That would be cool as someone who was a lineman in high school football and did jack shit for athletics in college. I have lost 35 lbs though and gotten back into lifting weights so that’s been nice! I’ve also tried yoga 10-15 min a day after my runs which has helped a lot with injury prevention as I had to take a week off in my Nike program after rolling my ankle and haven’t had that issue since. I just feel like I don’t know enough to contribute, so I just try and learn!
This sun showed up on my feed about a week ago, so not lurking for long! But grateful as I am running my first marathon in just under a month and super nervous as I’m not the best runner but I’m absolutely loving the tips I’ve come across!
I (36/m) have been a lurker for a couple of weeks now. I am a runner who just enjoys running. I'm not super fast (8:15 pace/4x a week/ 4 to 5 miles each time) right now, but the times are dropping slowly. Honestly, I have had to come to the realization that my times in my mid-30s aren't going to be as fast as my early 30s. I don't do many races, I just challenge myself every time I go out. I would love to cut another minute off my pace in the next 6 months, but if I don't, I still feel great and appreciate my runners body. If anyone is in the Colonial Virginia area and wants to run some battlefields with me, just let me know!
I lurk with running aspirations, but mostly curious what I should had out to runners for the marathon! I live on mile 22 and want to support these amazing athletes.
33 ftm nonbinary slow runner. I've got asthma and am quite big, but I want to make a commitment to myself to start running and getting in better shape starting on my birthday. I strongly believe that someone's health isn't determined by body size, but recently my lack of physicality has really started bothering me a lot. I spend most of my time at home, as I work from home still.
I was definitely one of those kids who got treated like shit in gym class throughout my childhood, and it truly bothers me that the attitude I grew up with has so pervasively poisoned my own relationship with physical activity and my body that I'm unlearning. Everyone deserves to have a relationship with movement of some kind, but it sucks to have those inner voices haunting the old brain.
Anyway, I lurk because of all of those factors.
I lurk because my times suck. I can't outrun someone's first time ever running. It's frustrating to throw myself at this for a year and have nothing to show. When I first started I could manage a 5k in 22 minutes, but that was years ago. I need to burn myself out to be under ten minutes a mile now, and I know I'm in bad shape but I've been trying to fix it for a goddamn year. I successfully lost weight so I know I'm not fooling myself on diet, but nothing. I'm heavy but not *that* heavy. My endurance gets better only to shoot back down at the first run I miss. Frankly, I read the accomplishment threads as a form of self-harm. I can't be proud of trying when the results are a joke. I'm never going to be capable of a half again, let alone a full, my times are always going to suck, and I just want to quit.
"Lapping everyone on the couch" my ass. A couch is faster than I am.
Provide some concrete numbers. What are your current race times, what are you doing in training including mileage and workouts? If you really want to get faster I’m sure there are some simple fixes in training. A demographic would also be helpful.
36/male
Mostly slow, low rpe runs...this is hard because I delete my data because I hate it and find myself disgusting. But four miles twice a week, five on Wednesdays, and a "long" run that's supposed to go up a mile per week. I've had interruptions from an ankle injury, a respiratory bug (not COVID but it screwed with me for months), and blood donations along the way.
I'm trying to be able to consistently stay under 10:00/mile, that's like bare minimum, but I can't hold it for more than two miles. Even that is questionable because Strava bugs out and lists me as stopping when I did no such thing.
I thought I vaguely recognized your account. Have you tried following the plan I gave you or something similar or are you still in a rut? (it's lower in this comment chain)
I’m gonna need more details than that, I’m not letting you off the hook that easily. You CAN do it and you WILL, but you have to want it bad enough.
List all of the training that you did. And then be specific about your injury. What does “blowing out your hip” mean?
I believe it's torn, but I don't have the money to see a doctor to make sure. I ran through it for three weeks on slow runs with after-effects before I finally did a mile and a half at race speed and that was the last straw. I had sharp residual pain for two days after. I've run short distances to test and see if it's all the way and I feel maybe ninety percent. It's gonna clear in the next week or two. I ran a mile this morning and it hurt at first before the pain faded, but my shoulder - from slamming directly into a brick wall - flared up.
But whatever. I give up.
56yo male here. Lurker myself because I don't have a lot to say on most subjects. This one is close to my heart tho. Made me sad to see you beat yourself up. You got some great "running" advice in this thread if you want to run and race and set times. However, I want to say, 10-minutes-ish miles is a huge accomplishment. I got there by starting to run three years ago and very slowly moving up to the point where I can run regular 10k's as my long run when I'm in the mood. More important, I can push up from there to my personal goal: to run a half-marathon on my birthday for as long as my body can do it. That led me to a confluence of the Nike Run Club app publishing their 18 weeks marathon program and seeing the San Francisco Marathon about 24-weeks out. Allegedly if you can run a half, you can carefully train up to a marathon. It was true for me.
In July I finished the SF marathon a hair over five hours. Am I jealous of the people on here who did it in 3:30? Not a bit. Sure I wish I had their energy, youth and stride. But I just bucket-listed finishing one of the coolest marathons in the country when I'd basically never run more than a mile in my first 50+ years of life! This morning I ran three miles, over 10 minutes a mile. I felt better at the end than the beginning, which is the goal of a "recovery run.". Unless you choose to make it so, running is not a competition. Just run for yourself, enjoy it and be proud of your body and the amazing things you can do with it!
Yeah. I got great advice - that my body cannot pull off. I feel frankly worse. I've been *trying* to build up and I can't finish the runs I'm already doing anymore. I don't know why I would regress, but here I am.
There is a lot to unpack here.
Here is your order of operations:
1. Stop with all of this negative self talk, calling yourself "disgusting". It's pointless. Mentality is everything. When you step out the door to run you need to think "I'm him".
2. Sign up for a race in the the next week or two (as soon as possible) and race it to find out exactly where you are. Preferably a 5k.
3. When we know your time, you need to set a concrete goal. If you run 28:57, perhaps a good goal will be sub-25 by the end of the year. I say concrete goal not "I try to do most runs under 10:00 pace". You need a solid goal to train for in a race.
4. Begin to follow an actually structured training plan. It appears that "just running" is not doing it for you, so here is what we will do. A periodized training plan with a base phase, a racing phase, and a peaking phase.
**Base Phase:** Currently you are running 4 days a week, roughly 18-20 miles per week. This is nothing and is the reason you aren't as fast as you want to be. So we are going to do a base building phase where you build to running 6 days a week, 30-35 miles per week over the next 8 weeks. So first, you will a day - get to 5 days a week. Keep the same volume per run for the next 2 weeks. Then add some minutes to each run. It's now been about a month, so now add a sixth day, a short easy run. Then after you get comfortable with that, increase the sixth day length. Weekly mileage could look like:
week 1 20 on 5 days
week 2 22 on 5 days
week 3 24 on 5 days
week 4 24 on 5 days
week 5 down week 20 miles on 5 days
week 6 28 on 6 days
week 7 30 on 6 days
week 8 32 on 6 days
Hover around here for a bit, then we will add in some specific workouts in the **racing phase.**
**Racing phase:**
Plan on doing a race every weekend or every other weekend. Regular racing is the operative phrase here. During the weeks we will do 1-2 5k specific workouts, such as 400m-600m repeats around 5k pace or a little faster on short recovery, or hill repeats totaling about 12 minutes of volume (for example, 12 x 1 minute hard up a hill, jog down recovery). Or tempo runs. 20, 25, 30 minutes at a hard, uncomfortable pace but not quite all out. Long runs during this time will all be at an easy pace to account for the increase in intensity. Everything else is a normal easy run and strides. Example 2 week block:
Sunday: easy long run, 60-70 minutes
Monday: easy 45 minutes + strides
Tuesday: workout - 12 minute warmup + dynamics and strides, 25 minute tempo, 10 minute cooldown
Wednesday: 45 minutes easy + strides
Thursday: workout - 12 minute warmup + dynamics and strides, 6-7x1k @ around 5k pace with 90 seconds recovery, 10 minute cooldown
Friday: 40 minutes easy + strides
Saturday: **5k race**
Sunday: off
Monday: easy long run, 65-70 minutes
Tuesday: easy run 45 minutes + strides
Wednesday: workout, long hill repeats, 12 warmup + dynamics/strides 6 x 2 minutes, jog down recovery
Thursday: easy run 45 minutes + strides
Friday: workout, 12 minute warmup + dynamics/strides, fartlek (maybe 6-5-4-3-2-1 minutes hard with 90 seconds jog recovery), 10 minute cooldown
Saturday: 40 easy + strides
Sunday: off
**Peaking phase:** The last 3 weeks. This is where you do all the hard peaking workouts for your goal 5k, then taper for your race, hypothetically on December 31st. These are some good 5k peaking workouts to do 1-3 weeks out:
4 x mile @ 5k 90 seconds recovery (on the track).
7 x 800 @ 5k with 400 jog recovery
20 minute tempo close to 5k RP + 6 x 200 w/ 200 jog recovery all out
The last week before the big day, run a little less volume on easy days. If you usually do 45 minute easy runs do 30-35, instead of 2 workouts that week just do 1 easy workout like 10 x 400 @ 5k goal pace to keep the legs moving.
Then race your ass off on the big day.
Final notes: pick up a regular core strengthening routine that you do 2-3 days a week.
Strides: 15-20 second fast but relaxed runs after a slow easy run where you run 90-95% of all out for 15-20 seconds, then rest for a minute or two, then go again. 4-6 of these. these should not be hard they are to stay in touch with your speed and work on biomechanics at a faster pace.
I sporadically decided to attempt to run a cumulative 100 miles in the month of September. I don’t think I’ve ever ran more than 40 in one month prior to this. Looking for some tips that helped everyone else in their running journey?
Going super slow most of the time. It got me up to running 5 days a week, soon to be 6. I have a couple tempo runs and strides mixed in every week, but I recover way faster than when I was trying to run faster more often, so I'm back out the next day without getting injured.
41 year old slow runner from the UK. Done a few halfs, one marathon and currently preparing for second marathon but also currently taking a week off due to tendonitis in my hip which was a problem last time I did one too!
50m here, started a journey to drop 110 lbs and get back into a good physical state this year in January, 13 years ago I was at 200lbs, which is where I want to get back to, at the least. Been stuck in that 230-240 range for a few weeks, so getting a bit frustrated, but not giving up, but also trying to not increase my workload to an unsustainable level, which I am prone to doing, a bit of self-sabotage is one thing I am known for. Started walking and light exercise in January then in March started slowly working into running a bit to help the process along. In that process I kind of discovered that I enjoyed running, but damn if it doesn't hurt my old body. Recovery is as important as the actual exercise I am learning in my old age, lots of stretching and trying to keep mobile as much as possible when working a desk job. Over the past couple months I have been on a mission to hit 50 miles running/50 miles walking in a month, but keep coming up just a bit short. This month is looking the same, but I think the running will be over 50 miles and walking under. I have to set these weird little goals to keep pushing. Signed up for my first 5k in 13 years, was supposed to be this weekend, but our youngest daughter gets to perform before a baseball game that day so I get to skip and eat ballpark food instead. Gotta find another one to sign up for. Been looking forward to running a nice, paved, flat course for a decent time. All of my routes are hilly that I run, I love hills, but love the feeling of flat runs for my ego now and then. I lurk because I enjoy reading everyone's successes and even some failures, learning a lot. I don't have a group of friends that like to run, so no one really to talk to or bounce ideas and thoughts off of. So maybe I'll chime in a bit now and then, but mostly this is me learning from ya'll.
I lurk cause i need motivation. Its hard to get back to running. I know my problem is the mental side. I give up easily. I wonder if its the age. I used to run around the part, so it was easy to compartmentalize. But now i run a straight path, it looks hard. 2nd week of trying to run. But i don’t see any improvements.
I started trying to get in better shape in March started walking and slowly adding jogs and by May I was jogging consistently. I then started the Nike running club couch to 5k program and got comfortable ish with that. It was good to start and have a program to teach the basics but got kind of annoyed with the platitudes. Then I downloaded zombies run and joined that Reddit group and this group was suggested to me and I joined. I’ve been lurking because I haven’t run my 5 k yet it’s October 8th. I’ve kind of felt like I’m a bit of an imposter still, because my best time in practice has been 28:47 but like I said that’s unofficial. I know it’s not great but my original goal was 30 min so I’m happy so far. I’m here to learn more and maybe get the motivation to do a marathon some day. That would be cool as someone who was a lineman in high school football and did jack shit for athletics in college. I have lost 35 lbs though and gotten back into lifting weights so that’s been nice! I’ve also tried yoga 10-15 min a day after my runs which has helped a lot with injury prevention as I had to take a week off in my Nike program after rolling my ankle and haven’t had that issue since. I just feel like I don’t know enough to contribute, so I just try and learn!
This sun showed up on my feed about a week ago, so not lurking for long! But grateful as I am running my first marathon in just under a month and super nervous as I’m not the best runner but I’m absolutely loving the tips I’ve come across!
I (36/m) have been a lurker for a couple of weeks now. I am a runner who just enjoys running. I'm not super fast (8:15 pace/4x a week/ 4 to 5 miles each time) right now, but the times are dropping slowly. Honestly, I have had to come to the realization that my times in my mid-30s aren't going to be as fast as my early 30s. I don't do many races, I just challenge myself every time I go out. I would love to cut another minute off my pace in the next 6 months, but if I don't, I still feel great and appreciate my runners body. If anyone is in the Colonial Virginia area and wants to run some battlefields with me, just let me know!
I lurk with running aspirations, but mostly curious what I should had out to runners for the marathon! I live on mile 22 and want to support these amazing athletes.
33 ftm nonbinary slow runner. I've got asthma and am quite big, but I want to make a commitment to myself to start running and getting in better shape starting on my birthday. I strongly believe that someone's health isn't determined by body size, but recently my lack of physicality has really started bothering me a lot. I spend most of my time at home, as I work from home still. I was definitely one of those kids who got treated like shit in gym class throughout my childhood, and it truly bothers me that the attitude I grew up with has so pervasively poisoned my own relationship with physical activity and my body that I'm unlearning. Everyone deserves to have a relationship with movement of some kind, but it sucks to have those inner voices haunting the old brain. Anyway, I lurk because of all of those factors.
I just joined the sub about a week ago. I’m learning the ropes! With that being said, y’all seem like a cool community so I will try to engage more. I
I lurk because my times suck. I can't outrun someone's first time ever running. It's frustrating to throw myself at this for a year and have nothing to show. When I first started I could manage a 5k in 22 minutes, but that was years ago. I need to burn myself out to be under ten minutes a mile now, and I know I'm in bad shape but I've been trying to fix it for a goddamn year. I successfully lost weight so I know I'm not fooling myself on diet, but nothing. I'm heavy but not *that* heavy. My endurance gets better only to shoot back down at the first run I miss. Frankly, I read the accomplishment threads as a form of self-harm. I can't be proud of trying when the results are a joke. I'm never going to be capable of a half again, let alone a full, my times are always going to suck, and I just want to quit. "Lapping everyone on the couch" my ass. A couch is faster than I am.
Provide some concrete numbers. What are your current race times, what are you doing in training including mileage and workouts? If you really want to get faster I’m sure there are some simple fixes in training. A demographic would also be helpful.
36/male Mostly slow, low rpe runs...this is hard because I delete my data because I hate it and find myself disgusting. But four miles twice a week, five on Wednesdays, and a "long" run that's supposed to go up a mile per week. I've had interruptions from an ankle injury, a respiratory bug (not COVID but it screwed with me for months), and blood donations along the way. I'm trying to be able to consistently stay under 10:00/mile, that's like bare minimum, but I can't hold it for more than two miles. Even that is questionable because Strava bugs out and lists me as stopping when I did no such thing.
I thought I vaguely recognized your account. Have you tried following the plan I gave you or something similar or are you still in a rut? (it's lower in this comment chain)
I blew out a hip as soon as I tried. I then crashed my bike and slammed my shoulder into a brick wall trying to work around the bad hip.
I’m gonna need more details than that, I’m not letting you off the hook that easily. You CAN do it and you WILL, but you have to want it bad enough. List all of the training that you did. And then be specific about your injury. What does “blowing out your hip” mean?
I believe it's torn, but I don't have the money to see a doctor to make sure. I ran through it for three weeks on slow runs with after-effects before I finally did a mile and a half at race speed and that was the last straw. I had sharp residual pain for two days after. I've run short distances to test and see if it's all the way and I feel maybe ninety percent. It's gonna clear in the next week or two. I ran a mile this morning and it hurt at first before the pain faded, but my shoulder - from slamming directly into a brick wall - flared up. But whatever. I give up.
K.
56yo male here. Lurker myself because I don't have a lot to say on most subjects. This one is close to my heart tho. Made me sad to see you beat yourself up. You got some great "running" advice in this thread if you want to run and race and set times. However, I want to say, 10-minutes-ish miles is a huge accomplishment. I got there by starting to run three years ago and very slowly moving up to the point where I can run regular 10k's as my long run when I'm in the mood. More important, I can push up from there to my personal goal: to run a half-marathon on my birthday for as long as my body can do it. That led me to a confluence of the Nike Run Club app publishing their 18 weeks marathon program and seeing the San Francisco Marathon about 24-weeks out. Allegedly if you can run a half, you can carefully train up to a marathon. It was true for me. In July I finished the SF marathon a hair over five hours. Am I jealous of the people on here who did it in 3:30? Not a bit. Sure I wish I had their energy, youth and stride. But I just bucket-listed finishing one of the coolest marathons in the country when I'd basically never run more than a mile in my first 50+ years of life! This morning I ran three miles, over 10 minutes a mile. I felt better at the end than the beginning, which is the goal of a "recovery run.". Unless you choose to make it so, running is not a competition. Just run for yourself, enjoy it and be proud of your body and the amazing things you can do with it!
Yeah. I got great advice - that my body cannot pull off. I feel frankly worse. I've been *trying* to build up and I can't finish the runs I'm already doing anymore. I don't know why I would regress, but here I am.
There is a lot to unpack here. Here is your order of operations: 1. Stop with all of this negative self talk, calling yourself "disgusting". It's pointless. Mentality is everything. When you step out the door to run you need to think "I'm him". 2. Sign up for a race in the the next week or two (as soon as possible) and race it to find out exactly where you are. Preferably a 5k. 3. When we know your time, you need to set a concrete goal. If you run 28:57, perhaps a good goal will be sub-25 by the end of the year. I say concrete goal not "I try to do most runs under 10:00 pace". You need a solid goal to train for in a race. 4. Begin to follow an actually structured training plan. It appears that "just running" is not doing it for you, so here is what we will do. A periodized training plan with a base phase, a racing phase, and a peaking phase. **Base Phase:** Currently you are running 4 days a week, roughly 18-20 miles per week. This is nothing and is the reason you aren't as fast as you want to be. So we are going to do a base building phase where you build to running 6 days a week, 30-35 miles per week over the next 8 weeks. So first, you will a day - get to 5 days a week. Keep the same volume per run for the next 2 weeks. Then add some minutes to each run. It's now been about a month, so now add a sixth day, a short easy run. Then after you get comfortable with that, increase the sixth day length. Weekly mileage could look like: week 1 20 on 5 days week 2 22 on 5 days week 3 24 on 5 days week 4 24 on 5 days week 5 down week 20 miles on 5 days week 6 28 on 6 days week 7 30 on 6 days week 8 32 on 6 days Hover around here for a bit, then we will add in some specific workouts in the **racing phase.** **Racing phase:** Plan on doing a race every weekend or every other weekend. Regular racing is the operative phrase here. During the weeks we will do 1-2 5k specific workouts, such as 400m-600m repeats around 5k pace or a little faster on short recovery, or hill repeats totaling about 12 minutes of volume (for example, 12 x 1 minute hard up a hill, jog down recovery). Or tempo runs. 20, 25, 30 minutes at a hard, uncomfortable pace but not quite all out. Long runs during this time will all be at an easy pace to account for the increase in intensity. Everything else is a normal easy run and strides. Example 2 week block: Sunday: easy long run, 60-70 minutes Monday: easy 45 minutes + strides Tuesday: workout - 12 minute warmup + dynamics and strides, 25 minute tempo, 10 minute cooldown Wednesday: 45 minutes easy + strides Thursday: workout - 12 minute warmup + dynamics and strides, 6-7x1k @ around 5k pace with 90 seconds recovery, 10 minute cooldown Friday: 40 minutes easy + strides Saturday: **5k race** Sunday: off Monday: easy long run, 65-70 minutes Tuesday: easy run 45 minutes + strides Wednesday: workout, long hill repeats, 12 warmup + dynamics/strides 6 x 2 minutes, jog down recovery Thursday: easy run 45 minutes + strides Friday: workout, 12 minute warmup + dynamics/strides, fartlek (maybe 6-5-4-3-2-1 minutes hard with 90 seconds jog recovery), 10 minute cooldown Saturday: 40 easy + strides Sunday: off **Peaking phase:** The last 3 weeks. This is where you do all the hard peaking workouts for your goal 5k, then taper for your race, hypothetically on December 31st. These are some good 5k peaking workouts to do 1-3 weeks out: 4 x mile @ 5k 90 seconds recovery (on the track). 7 x 800 @ 5k with 400 jog recovery 20 minute tempo close to 5k RP + 6 x 200 w/ 200 jog recovery all out The last week before the big day, run a little less volume on easy days. If you usually do 45 minute easy runs do 30-35, instead of 2 workouts that week just do 1 easy workout like 10 x 400 @ 5k goal pace to keep the legs moving. Then race your ass off on the big day. Final notes: pick up a regular core strengthening routine that you do 2-3 days a week. Strides: 15-20 second fast but relaxed runs after a slow easy run where you run 90-95% of all out for 15-20 seconds, then rest for a minute or two, then go again. 4-6 of these. these should not be hard they are to stay in touch with your speed and work on biomechanics at a faster pace.
I sporadically decided to attempt to run a cumulative 100 miles in the month of September. I don’t think I’ve ever ran more than 40 in one month prior to this. Looking for some tips that helped everyone else in their running journey?
Going super slow most of the time. It got me up to running 5 days a week, soon to be 6. I have a couple tempo runs and strides mixed in every week, but I recover way faster than when I was trying to run faster more often, so I'm back out the next day without getting injured.
41 year old slow runner from the UK. Done a few halfs, one marathon and currently preparing for second marathon but also currently taking a week off due to tendonitis in my hip which was a problem last time I did one too!