Same, I play football 3 times a week and at other times I train for football (stamina drills, plyometrics, speed training which is weight training and actual sprinting).
I’ve completely given up steady state cardio as it wasn’t doing the job, I want to progress my fitness, not just burn calories.
Sleep is of paramount importance. If I am tired and the choice is between catching up on sleep or working out, I will choose sleep. Working out while tired will be of little overall benefit. Without good sleep, the brain craves carbs to function and I also get big hunger pangs
100% I’ve become little obsessed with it to be honest because it makes a huge difference to how I feel. Not being the best “sleeper” doesn’t help but I’m better than I was. Still a bit of work on it but we’re getting there. I’m also trying a little bit of Tulsi (Holy Basil) supplementation at the moment to see if that helps.
Cardio wise I dont think I’m that bad but I wish I could figure out some of my “performance” issues. Being a bit asthmatic doesn’t help but I feel I’ve hit a ceiling which is way below others my age etc. and I do mean way below. The strength, speed and stamina are just not there, even compared to the guys at work. While they’re a pretty active bunch they aren’t exactly athletes etc.
Still, generally happy with everything at the moment.
For context 1:29 for a half is pretty damn good. It’s unlikely to win you a local race but there wont be more than a handful of people who will beat that, and they will be serious athletes putting in a lot of time to run those times. Pretty much everyone who gets that that level will have at least one crisis of asking themselves WTF am I doing this for? The work required to even maintain that is a LOT and you’ll still be pretty good relatively speaking for a good while even if you just stop training it altogether. If you;re not competing, fuck, if you’re not earning money competing (because I know several athletes who compete at the international level who even question the value of going on year after year), its common to hit a point where the effort to keep improving just isnt worth it.
Yes.
Managed a sub 2 hour half marathon when I was about 56.
Was raising money for a cause very close to me, so it was quite an emotional achievement too.
However, I cant motivate myself to run at all, never mind try to better my former achievement.