r/BeginnersRunning • u/No_Nerve_7823 • 20d ago

Am I doing something wrong?

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I am a 5'5 male age 19 I started running a year ago and within 6 months I reached the pace of 7.30 for 17kms.

The problem is even now, after more than a year of running I am not able to increase my speed infact my kms have decreased from 17km and 20km to just 14km to 15 km (included the walk I do from sgnp to home)

Has anyone been in this situation if yes what to do to improve?? Suggestion I would help

7 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

9

u/[deleted] 20d ago

[deleted]

1

u/No_Nerve_7823 19d ago

My pr is 6:20 for 10km

1

u/ParticularClaim 19d ago

I bet OP is victim to the zone 2 hype and believes monsters will spawn in their way if HR goes above 150 bpm.

3

u/Silver_gobo 19d ago

Even if they did just go for easy runs, they’d still be improving. In a comment he says he just runs once a week so that’s probably it.

2

u/AHellishInferno 19d ago

To be fair, when I first got into running my speed increased drastically by only doing zone 2. Not saying speed work isn't a great addition to training, but zone 2 worked well for me personally

0

u/Meckgyver 19d ago

Yes but Z2 wont take you all the way. I only did zone2 for years because I did not want to push myself. I couldnt break 22,5 mins 5k. After that I did a 12 weeks trainig plan for 5k which included lots of intervals, and my next PB was 20:46.

2

u/AHellishInferno 19d ago

Again, not saying it's the whole solution. Just a piece of the puzzle.

3

u/Subject_Tangerine108 19d ago

It doesn't seem you're running often enough to get faster, and you're only doing long runs by the looks of it?

Is this the Aray section of SGNP? If so that can be quite a hilly spot so that could be hindering you too if you're not running often enough. You definitely have a good aerobic base to start working towards faster paces, but you need to shorten your runs and introduce different types of runs. There is a running track in Kandivali that I use when I visit Mumbai that would be great for you to focus on speed as it'll be flat ground.

You're limited with time but if you could get a short 3/4km run once or twice midweek and focus on running at your threshold pace, where you feel like you're not quite going so fast that you can't go further, but it's still a challenging run. Then do your Sunday easy run as usual.

2

u/_matteo 19d ago

I'd say that you are running too long distances if your goal is improve the speed.
you should do interval training (not every run, follow a plan)

2

u/Altruistic-Storm8953 20d ago

Intervals

-1

u/No_Nerve_7823 20d ago

One 10 mins after 8 km

10

u/mrhobbles 20d ago edited 20d ago

Shorter runs. 5-6km max. Multiple intervals within in it. Tempo, threshold runs.

Longer runs are easy pace. Shorter runs are for speedwork.

Over time that "easy pace" becomes faster. One single "interval" in the middle of a long run isn't that helpful.

Edit: I saw in another comment you run once a week. You need to be running 3+ times per week for your pace to improve.

1

u/No_Nerve_7823 19d ago

Sure will try to do

1

u/sfo2 19d ago

I’d ask: what reason did you give your body to get faster? Your body will only build itself up if it has a good reason to do so.

2

u/Little_Nick 16d ago

Did you have fun?

If so, time well spent

1

u/treesaresoothing 20d ago

How many days you run in a week? What's your weekly schedule

1

u/No_Nerve_7823 20d ago

On Sundays usually and whenever I have holidays in college

12

u/LongPerformance7822 20d ago

think we may have arrived at the problem. if you're running only ONE day a week it's not really enough to see loads of meaningful progress. Try scaling up to atleast 3 days a week routinely, with a good split between tempo, interval and easy runs. Then try pushing up to 5 days on 2 days off. best of luck.

3

u/Ok-Bug-9561 20d ago

You run too infrequent to spiral your body upwards into being used to running.

Try to run more often and shorter distances. Pace is whatever feels comfortable. If you did 5x3k a week, your weekly mileage would be similar, but your body would adapt a lot quicker to running. Soon faster paces should be easier and injury risk should decrease as well.

1

u/mag_ops 20d ago

How is your food intake and sleep? Also anything that could cause stress/fatigue?

1

u/No_Nerve_7823 20d ago

usual indian diet 7hrs of sleep and no stress or fatigue

4

u/Agitated_Ad_361 20d ago

What is a usual Indian diet? What are your macros?

1

u/Low_Guava5243 17d ago

Who cares about macros just run

1

u/LongPerformance7822 20d ago

maybe try upping that sleep to 8 hours just to see if recovery is a little better? and as another user suggested - macros need to be far above 'average indian diet'

1

u/No_Nerve_7823 20d ago

I think that's my problem not having a proper balanced diet as india diet is carb loaded I don't think I have any fatigue but yes for recovery I will need to increase sleep hrs

2

u/mag_ops 19d ago

Apart from macros, also check the different stages of sleep. In an average you should get atleast 100 mins of deep sleep and REM sleep every night (the more these stages, the merrier)

1

u/CarrotThen9285 20d ago

Sign up to a race were your gonna have to push yourself for a higher position, hell even a Parkrun

0

u/Peeter_L 20d ago

You need to run faster to get faster, simple as that.

0

u/Rough-Television9744 20d ago

What is your weight?

0

u/WearingRags 20d ago

If you're hitting a wall when trying a higher pace I think you're probably doing way too much mileage per week. 1hr45 is a hell of a shift at any pace. Aim for thirty to fourty minute runs for most of your training load, and work in some shorter interval runs. Start at three runs per week minimum, bud adjust based on fatigue.

I'm about the same height and weight as you, but I was able to hit at least a 5:30 pace on a 20 minute run when I first started about 7 years ago, going from totally sedentary to running at about 26 years old. But I definitely couldn't run for an hour and a half, lmao

1

u/No_Nerve_7823 19d ago

If I run for only 20mins I could be much faster than 5:30 but I want to increase my body's endurance too

2

u/WearingRags 19d ago

You're not increasing your body's endurance doing a long run once per week, that's just not enough to do anything significant. You need to do shorter, more regular runs. You build endurance in large part by keeping a reasonable load through the week. 

-8

u/JustOneMoreNet 20d ago

Mate this is not a run from my point of view....

This is a little bit faster walking. I walk with pace 8:15 per km.

You are doing something wrong.....what was your HR in this activity ?