Why Your Easy Runs Are Too Fast
The short version
- Most runners run their easy days too hard.
- Easy running builds your engine and lets you recover for the sessions that matter.
- If you cannot hold a conversation, it is not an easy run.
If I could change one thing for most runners, it would be this. Slow down on your easy days.
It sounds too simple to matter. But running easy days too hard is one of the most common mistakes I see, and I have made it plenty of times myself. It leaves you tired for the sessions that count, and it is usually where niggles start.
Why it happens
Easy pace feels slow, and slow feels like you are not training. So the pace creeps up. A bit quicker because you feel good. A bit quicker because someone will see it on Strava. A bit quicker because the last kilometre is downhill.
You end up in the middle. Too fast to recover, too slow to count as a session. Every run feels moderately hard, and nothing feels great.
What easy running is for
Easy miles do two jobs. They build your aerobic base, which is the engine behind every distance from 5K to the marathon. And they let you absorb the hard work, so that when a session comes round you can run it properly.
Keep the easy days easy, so the hard days can be hard. That is the whole idea.
How to tell if you are going too fast
- The talk test. You should be able to chat in full sentences. If you are down to a few words at a time, ease off.
- How you finish. An easy run should leave you feeling you could turn round and do it again.
- The next day. If your legs are heavy going into a session, yesterday was probably not easy.
How to fix it
- Give yourself a ceiling. Put a recent race time into the pace calculator. It gives you an easy pace range. Treat the fast end as a limit, not a target.
- Run to effort when it is hilly, hot or windy. Pace means very little on a bad day. Easy is a feeling first and a number second.
- Hide the pace. If you cannot stop checking, change your watch screen to time or heart rate for easy runs.
- Run with company. If you can talk the whole way round, you have got it right.
What to expect
The first couple of weeks will feel strange, maybe even a little embarrassing. Stick with it. Give it a few weeks and the usual pattern is fresher legs, better sessions, and a weekly routine that feels like something you can keep doing.
Consistency is what moves you forward. Easy running is what makes consistency possible.
Find your easy pace
The free pace calculator turns a recent race time into training paces for every type of run.
