Getting back to running

sb67

I'm a reasonably fit 52 year old, have payed football and trained all my life and despite a few injuries have managed to keep training doing HIIT's, circuits and weights. I'm trying to get back to my running but really finding it hard to keep the pace and times of a few years ago, the other day I had to stop while running 6k as I had "nothing in the tank" after 4k when a few years ago I used to run further than that without breaking sweat! 

Might seem a silly question but yesterday on a treadmill I managed 6k in 30mins but was knackered after and my average heart rate was 154BPM. Could it be that I'm trying to run too fast and struggling as I'm spending too much time in a high heart rate zone so fatiguing quicker, is the simple answer to slow down to keep my heart rate lower?

Sorry if it's a dumb question but I'm trying to get my head round the reason for not running as fast as I want.


Many thanks.

Steve.  

SHADES

Although you've been keeping yourself fairly fit it sounds like you haven't been doing enough aerobic exercise which trains your heart and lungs.   And as you used to run it's easy for you to 'remember' how fast you used to run and try and do that again even subconsciously.

So yes, you need to slow down.   Run at a pace that gets you slightly out of breath but you can hold a conversation and focus on extending the time/distance of your runs for now.    Average heart rate is irrelevant unless you know what your maximum heart rate is.   Then in a few weeks introduce one slightly  faster run each week to work on your speed, all the other runs should be at easy pace and should feel comfortable.

sb67

Thanks for that. I do run subconsciously fast, I find it really hard to run slower if I'm on my own. 

TT

If you struggle to run slowly how about introducing some walk breaks? Would mean increasing the distance, and gives your heart rate chance to decrease.