Easy does it

Yesterday, my marathon training plan listed: “5 miles, easy.” If you are actually following a specific plan for a race of any distance, it helps to understand the terms that are used. Nearly every race plan includes “easy” days, but what exactly does that mean? Easy is not specific at all–it is the opposite of “hard”–I know that much. But how easy is easy? What does “easy” mean for me? It’s obvious that easy days alternate with “hard” days, so it’s plain to see that this easy-hard pattern is meant to keep runners from turning every workout into a Hard Day.
Easy days, also called recovery days, allow the body to heal and get stronger from the hard days–speed days, and long-run days. But almost everyone cheats on their easy days, including me. They just seem terribly slow. But according to the Runner’s Connect, The Ultimate Marathon Ebook–Sample Marathon Plan that I’m using, easy really does mean easy, and cheating can cause more harm rather than provide benefits.
Running too fast on easy days defeats the whole purpose that they are intended for, which is healing. Failure to heal from previous hard runs will impede the quality of future hard runs. And over the course of your entire training session, you could emerge less fit than if you had more strictly followed the entire plan.
Runner’s Connect states that “aerobic development is roughly the same whether you’re running at 30 seconds or 2 minutes slower than marathon pace.” But if you run faster than this on easy days, there is very little additional aerobic development, and a very real chance that accumulated stresses will delay recovery and, overall, be detrimental to your training. Runner’s Connect cites the example of Catherine Ndereba, a Kenyan runner with a 2:18:47 marathon PR. Her easy pace is 7:00-7:30, which is 2 minutes, or so, slower than her marathon pace.
On yesterday’s easy run, I decided it was time to follow the directions and run easy. My goal marathon race pace is 8:30, so I set out to run 9:30 miles. My first mile was 9:10–OK, first mile, always too eager in the beginning, I thought, I’ll slow down. Mile 2–9:15. Mile 3–9:15. Ouch! Whatever your goal pace for whatever race, it’s HARD to run one minute slower than that. To be honest, I had forgotten that 30 seconds slower was acceptably slow, so I was still OK, but what actually helped me after Mile 3 was remembering that I didn’t have to hit one minute slower exactly on the nose; I remembered that even up to two minutes slower would work. With that in mind, my last three miles were 9:29, 9:51, and 9:38, and, overall, I averaged 9:27 for the 5 miles. Most advanced running watches allow you to set a range of training paces, beeping when you have gone too fast or too slow. On my next easy run, I’m going to set that up so that I don’t have to keep glancing at my watch and guessing.
You don’t have to run hard in every workout. If you do, you might not be able to run hard when you have to, like on race day, or, for me, on that scheduled six miler at Marathon Race Pace this Thursday!
Gotta Run,
Craig Lore