Everyone said it gets easier, and it has not yet
Somebody told you early on that it gets easier. Probably more than one person. It was offered kindly, usually at the point where you were complaining about how hard the first few runs were, and you held on to it. Give it a few weeks, they said. Then it clicks.
A couple of months later you are still going out, and it has not clicked. The runs are still hard. Some of them are a bit longer than they were, but the feeling of them has hardly moved, and the promise has started to sound like an exam other people passed.
The hard part moved, and you went with it
The run you were doing in your first fortnight probably is easier now. If you went out tomorrow and did exactly that run, the same distance at the same pace, you would likely notice. The trouble is that you do not do that run any more. You go a bit further, or a bit quicker, because that is what progress looks like, and each new version sits right at the edge of what you can manage.
So the edge stays where it was, relative to you, and you keep walking up to it. People who have run for years are mostly doing the same thing, which is why they will also tell you, if you catch them on a bad day, that it never gets easier. They mean the same thing the first person meant. The work gets easier, and you keep choosing more of it.
Some of it did get easier, just not the part you were watching
When people say it gets easier, they are often talking about something other than breathing. They mean the deciding. The argument at the door that used to take half an hour. Finding the shoes. Knowing which route to take, what to wear when it is cold, how long the opening stretch will feel wrong for. All of that was heavy in the first month, and most of it has gone quiet without you noticing it go.
That is a real change, and it is the one that keeps people going. It just does not show up while you are running, which is where you were checking for it. You were waiting to feel it in your legs, and it arrived in the hour before.
A hard run is not a sign you are behind
The risk in the promise is what you make of it when it seems to fail. If it was supposed to get easier and it has not, the obvious conclusion is that something about you is slow to take. Other people got the click and you did not, so perhaps this is not for you. That line of thinking finishes a lot of people around the second or third month, and it rests on a misunderstanding of what they were told.
Hard is the ordinary texture of this. It is what running feels like when you are doing enough of it to change anything. Nobody else has quietly stopped finding it hard while you were still waiting. Mostly they have got used to it being hard, which is a different thing and much more within your reach.
Go back and do the old run once
If you want evidence, there is a simple way to get it. Next time you go out, do the run you were doing in your first couple of weeks. Same route, same length. Take it at an easy pace and do not turn it into a test you can fail. Just notice what it is like.
Most people come back from that a little surprised. It is the route that used to finish them, and it has become something they could manage on a tired evening. That is the getting easier, sitting exactly where people said it would be. You had just stopped visiting it.
Then go back to your usual runs, the hard ones, and let them stay hard. That is what they are for. What eases over time is how ordinary the effort starts to feel, and you are further into that than it seems from the middle of a hard run.
Written to encourage, not to diagnose. If something hurts or feels wrong, please speak to a doctor.