Been looking for a real answer to this for a long time, yet to find one that satisfies me so I thought I would see what you guys think.
I’m a 30 year old former competitive powerlifter, am still strong enough to hit 3/4/5 in the gym any day of the week. I am 6’ 187lbs and have been training consistently for about 10 years. Every summer I do a stint of cardio training, usually a combination of stairs, incline treadmill and running. Every single year I basically have to restart the C25K running program, I literally cannot jog 1/2 a mile even at my slowest pace - by the end of my 4ish months of training I tend to get back to a 35-40 minute 5k. Restart the next summer.
So, I do improve with training which is good - but I have to say I have never met anyone in my life who’s baseline cardio is that bad. I have had couch potato (even obese) friends get into running and basically within the first couple weeks they are at least able to jog a 5k without stopping even if the pace is slow.
Yes I understand that I don’t train cardio consistently, but I am perplexed as to why my baseline cardio is even worse than people who have never exercised a day in their lives - while I have been doing athletics my whole adult life. I have have spirometry tests done with my doctor and they found nothing unusual, apparently no signs of asthma. My resting heart rate is also 75+, which is strangely high for someone who exercises regularly.
Is it really just a genetic short straw? Could there be some medical condition? I am curious if you have seen such wide variance between baseline fitness levels.