What am I doing wrong?
I have been a casual road cyclist (once per week, roughly 60-80km) since covid, and decided to try running last September for the first time since high school.
To my surprise I really enjoyed it. I think the cycling base helped, so it wasn’t as painful as I thought it would be. Over the next few weeks and months I watched a few Youtube videos about zone 2, bought a Garmin and a couple of pairs of running shoes and threw myself into it.
From September until January it was going great. I built up to 50km per week, with a weekly long run of about 18-21km, a couple of easy runs and some faster intervals or threshold sessions.
At the end of January I ran a 19 min 53 sec parkrun, and was looking forward to chipping away at that time this year.
However, it’s now April, and I’ve never managed a sub 20 minute parkrun since (my last 4 were between 20 min 10 sec and 20 min 50 sec). I’ve been following a Runna plan, running 6x per week, increased my mileage to about 65km, added in some hills, but I just seem to be standing still.
Garmin says my VO2 Max has improved since Jan, but my lactate threshold is static, and my race predictions on both Garmin and Strava have been stagnant.
Any idea what I’m doing wrong?
Not sure if it’s relevant but I’m M39, 188cm (6’2”), weigh about 83kg. I live in SE Asia, so it’s basically always about 28-30 degrees C and very humid when I run, but I’ve lived here for 9 years so I’m pretty used to it.