Anybody else experience this?

Running
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I need to start off explaining I am, at best, a back of the pack runner. I haven’t always been that way. I used to be a strong runner, if not particularly fast. There was a time, 30 years ago, when I could comfortably hold an 8 minute mile for 20+ miles and then go for a swim or play some volleyball.

But I digress. Anyway, I notice when I run now, particularly when I’m just doing a run, not part of a tri or BRIC training, that for about the first five minutes or so, my body is really, really resistant to running. It’s almost like my body is screaming, “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE STOP!!!” Everything seems to be disjointed. My breathing is off, my stride is lethargic and uncomfortable, even my arm swing feels really uncoordinated.

Everything kind of hurts and I really want to stop and do something else entirely.

Now, if I were to slow down to a more comfortable pace, it would barely be more than a brisk walk.

But I push through, and after about 4-5 minutes my body finally resolves to the activity. It’s like, “alright you sorry mthrfckr, I’ll do this but I’m going to make you hate life.” So I get past this point and things begin to kind of work like they’re supposed to, but it’s not like years ago when running was “my happy place”. I can run, but I’m slow. A good day for me is running at about a 10min/mile pace, and I can only maintain that for 5 or 6 miles. Anything longer and I drop down to 12-13 minute pace.

I don’t experience this nearly to the extent right after I get off the bike. I still do, but it’s not as noticeable and resolves much more quickly.

I just think it’s weird. I used to really enjoy running. Now, it’s like the labors of Heracles.

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Your body isn’t ready or fit enough to go from 0 to 10min/mile.

At the beginning of every run walk easy for 5 min then fitness walk for 5 min then get into your run.

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Ready, maybe. Fit, certainly. I’ve done multiple triathlons, including a full distance IM. I may be carrying an extra few pounds but I am most certainly fit enough.

4

I spent a few years whining about aging and was not enjoying my running as much as I could have at the time. At 55, the peak of my race pace is a 6 min mile and in mulitisport, I’m firmly in the 7-8 min mile pace.

What you describe happens often enough and I use the same rule I tried to team all my HS runners when I was coaching. I just called it the 30-minute rule. If you start a run and feel terrible, then keep at it for a bit and see how you feel later. If at 30 minutes you still feel bad, then stop. Come back the next day and try again. A lot of times after 30 I’ll feel fine and enjoy my run. If it is really bad, I’ll walk back. Age has made me a wiser runner.
I suspect in another ten or fifteen years, I’ll be doing a lot of walking to start out and end, but so far I seem to be able to keep on running.
The decline starts around 40ish, but honestly, the last ten years have not been bad except when I spent a lot more time cycling and then tried to ramp up my running miles again. Now I keep my running steady throughout the whole year.

And everyone once in a while, I actually feel fast.

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Trust me, it’s a warming up issue. You need to get your cardiovascular, nervous, and musculoskeletal systems warmed up before you have them start pounding away at up to 8-10x your bodyweight running.

Fitness means more than just being able to run fast. It’s a measure of your entire body’s systems. And your body is telling you it needs something.

You said it yourself, not an issue running off the bike right? Because you’re already warmed up.

8-10 min progressive walking warmup and maybe some 30" strides and you’ll notice a difference.

7

I hear ya! So I’ve never been really out of shape. I did let myself go for a number of years after I got out of the military. Certainly was not as fit then as my military time or currently, but I could always do the things, physically, I wanted to do. At least I never had children. It’s just at that time I didn’t particularly want to do a lot physically.

Cancer was a bit of a wake up call for me. But the flip side of that is between the cancer and subsequent treatment, it really screwed up the way my body works. At least that’s my theory. It certainly screwed up a lot of things besides my physicality so it only makes sense that there would be a correlation to my performance.

But that’s just making excuses. Like you mentioned, I think the aging has been a big factor. Although I see people my age and better putting out better performance than me. Some of that goes back to the physicality. I’ve said before elsewhere, I’m really not built for this shit. I’m built more for picking up heavy things, not running or cycling or swimming. I just do it because, well, I hate my body. I mean if I’m being truthful here. I hate being built like a linebacker. A little personal insight but I see these women that are 5’6" or 5’8" and 120 pounds and it just pisses me off that I am built the way I am.

So I do this shit in spite of my body. I’m going to force my body to do things it wasn’t really designed or built to do. Granted, I could stand to lose a good 20 pounds (or more :flushed: ) to get down to a more “trim” size but I’ve also been pretty up front about why I do triathlon. I tell people all the time, “I don’t exercise the way I do because I like to exercise. I exercise the way I do because I like to eat!”, and that’s no joke.

Thing is, my diet isn’t particularly bad. I do have the occasional burger and fries but most nights it’s some kind of salad and a protein. My weakness, my addiction, my Achilles heel, though, is the sweets. I do love the sweet stuff. Always have. It’s my one sin. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t gamble, I just love the sugar.

I’m sure that has something to do with it as well. Actually considering trying some kind of hypnotherapy to help shut down those cravings.

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Love yourself. Age and menopause (or pre, don’t mean to be presumtuous) don’t help. You probably crush the swim and bike. I swim like a sea horse. Ive followed your posts for some time. Im older than you and am a cheerleader for you. If I was taller and good at basketball I would’ve played in the NBA. You do you. Try to find joy in that. You rock Jen.

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:two_hearts:More of this! If @FedeleTemperini has your back, @VegasJen, I’ve got theirs. We’ll walk the first mile like a conga line, propping each other up.

My go-to running spot has only one little hill, and it’s 5 minutes in. I know how it’s going to go by the time I’m clomping down the other side, but it’s invariably better than the first few minutes. It’s nice to hear I’m not the only one!

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A proper warm up will help a lot, many days training for IM athletes feel awful first 20min and build into it, if I am going to run repeats or intervals first 20min is definitely low z2 high cadence chit chat pace, and ideally can do some walk runs if needed to get into swing of things.

I’m not far off your age at 52, u may be able to significantly improve your body mechanics with exercises especially hips and mobility, not just stretching, actual exercises with bands etc should be ur forte as u had strength before. Rolling and loosening can help but u need the rebound elasticity and not tightness.

If have a garmin look at run dynamics we see hoping for high cadence 180+ not over or under striding not bouncing so low vertical oscillation and low ground contact time, stemming from good posture and technique which needs a strong core, stable correct position and some degree of flexibility. Can use the warm up to focus on this zero interest in pace only form and ease into it. Once u are 20min in then the work can begin.

Body size cost general wisdom is approx 2sec per km per kg of body weight. So… Assume 8kg is costing u 16sec per km or over a 70.3 approx 10-12min. It’s not that much. At our age the cost of injury is way more if u lost 3 months of training so keeping reasonable body weight and pushing weights is fine. Body fat less good so worth it to trim down but not at cost of life enjoyment.

Personally I think bricks are overrated once u have familiarity, the key runs u need are the long z2 low HR run to run efficiently and long, a tempo solid continuous run and a track or interval day where u really push, the interval day gives u that better technique brick once in a while as masters athletes cost is too high vs return especially since u are training middle distance not sprints.

If u have a sweet tooth u can eat sugary stuff just build into your routine aligning to ur hard training sessions, sugar no fat eg banana bread fruit etc eat 45min - 75min before your harder training sessions eg sweet spot will be flying. Can be 2 hrs + if also with fat eg a cake but time before a long run or ride when u can burn it all off. Or immediately after finishing with 20min or end. Lunch semi OK breakfast semi OK ratcenjoy and take a little walk or move around and no guilt. dinner not so OK. No sugar after dinner or evening as it screws up your sleep and that’s the gain weight time.

Try to avoid insulin kick by eating real food before sweets or adding salad etc, eat in order protein fibre then carbs not carbs first. Try to savour when u eat things sweet that u like not gulping really concentrate and enjoy it, and as pleasure decreases and dopa hit diminishes try to stop and save it for another meal and get out of habit of over indulging.

If u like stroop waffles candy soft drink etc eat it during your training especially the bike. Zero negatives.

The less sugar and especially processed carbs u eat the less u will crave them. American diet can be quite poor coupled with massive serving sizes. It’s not easy to be thin there with out some strategies.

Always love ur posts and ur journey. Keep going see u in Kona one day!

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Thank you all for your encouragement.

I did a 5k this morning and as a test I did a light jog for about a 1/4 mile prior to the start. Got back to the starting line about 2 minutes before the gun so spent those minutes stretching. I wasn’t any faster, slower in fact, than normal, but I didn’t feel that weird funk to first few minutes like normal.

And Kipstar, I definitely need to spend more time warming up and stretching. I don’t have nearly the mobility, particularly in the hips, I really should have. My longitudinal movement is fine, but my lateral flexibility is teh suck.

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Warm up + some active stretches is a great plan, Static stretching before running is basically not doing much u want to be doing dynamic activation stretches. The key is at other times doing a combo of strength building and flexibility in a structured way correcting the tightness that triathletes runners and cyclists tend to develop reducing range of motion. Static stretches work well as their own thing combined with foam rolling massage gun and muscle activation. I do a ton of tiny movements now to correct itb problems etc from before all down to years of neglect, just stretch isn’t enough

Fyi I warm up 20min for all non brick run warm ups and all bike work outs, often it feels 3 5 min in that I 2ould be utterly unable to complete, HR will often go from resting to maybe 120 bike 125 run then slowly drop t by 20min hr has dropped to 110 on bike, 110 115 run and I’m ready and primed. Swim warm uo shorter more like 10min sometimes less or more.

Race day same. Very common beginners even some advanced ppl think they are burning matches and energy they could use in the race so skip any warm up. Cost is that hr spike goes up never settles and it’s a day of harder effort for same pace or worse. Also warm up gives us a chance to mentally focus on technique and what we want out of it

Run for me cadence body stance strike pattern avoid bouncing as I’m not a good runner

Swim for me lengthen stroke don’t rush the catch maximum length per stroke correct catch pull pattern and timing connect to water relaxed recovery not snaking body in core. I’m a crappy swimmer so this run through list in warm up means I get correct or somewhat correct prior to main set rather than spending an hour doing something wrong

Bike least technical so really is just genuine mindless warm up as I’m an OK cyclist

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Sounds like possibly normal aging

I start biking and feel bad. 90 watts is tough

10 mins in feeling a bit better

An hour in and the watts are higher and higher and easier and easier to push. 1.5 hours plus seems to be the sweetspot

My guess would be talk to an 80 year old runner. They probably take even longer to warm up

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^this

at 54, I find it best to start my runs VERY slow. the first mile is a full 1 to 1.5 min slower per mile than my comfortable pace. If for some reason, I start out too quick, the remainder of the run never feels good. weird. so now, the first mile is always slow.

biking is the same way. first 5 to 10 min is warmup. I just call it priming the engine.

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