I’ve read tons of posts already but haven’t heard of anyone being quite as slow as me, so I thought I’d ask again.
Here’s a little background: I’m a 29 year old male, 140 lbs. Several years ago I used to be an avid swimmer, but I haven’t done much of anything for the past 7-8 years in the way of physical activity. When I was more physically active years ago, virtually all my exercises were intervals at higher intensity levels than what 80/20 calls for. Basically, I’ve never done anything that resembles zone 2 training in my life!
Now that I’ve started, I have a LTHR of 183 and a max of 205 (if that’s even relevant). To stay in the zone 2, I have to slow down to a 15:00 mile pace!!! At this rate, I’m just “pretending” to jog–it really feels more like a shuffle than anything. On a good day, I can keep this up for an entire 1 hour run; on a bad day, I might have to add walking intervals after 30 minutes or so. What’s really embarrassing is that I can walk at the EXACT same pace and my HR immediately drops about 15 BPM (I’m using a chest strap, just in case anyone was wondering about possible cadence interference). As soon as I change to the jogging motion, however, my HR jumps back up again.
I guess I’m just looking for some validation that I’m not alone or maybe some reassurance that it will eventually improve… or, maybe should I be training based on pace instead? For what it’s worth, at my 4mph “shuffle”, I feel like I could carry on a full conversation and keep going all day; 5mph my voice just barely starts to be strained and I could probably hold for an hour; 6.5 mph is about what I would hold for 30 minutes or a 5k.
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