Easy/long run pace

Bill Oregon wrote:

Follow up to B, if they don’t agree, what do I do?

A

try this? wrote:

Bill Oregon wrote:

Follow up to B, if they don’t agree, what do I do?

A

Alright... we’ll see

Are you faster than the rest of your team come race day? If not, the answer is...

C. Stop trying to win practice & run with the team.

And what kind of pace difference are we talking about here? A few seconds slower won't hurt you, but going a bit too fast on the easy/long days could hurt you and/or your teammates. I would err on the side of caution and just run with the team.

David S. Pumpkins wrote:

Are you faster than the rest of your team come race day? If not, the answer is...

C. Stop trying to win practice & run with the team.

I'm guessing this is the answer.

OP, are you the best runner on the team?

Run more. Since you're not tired at the end of runs just hammer two more miles.

how about this wrote:

Run more. Since you're not tired at the end of runs just hammer two more miles.

Don't listen to this fruit. Don't need to be tired after your mileage. How fast is the team going? How fast do you want to go? I had a few old teammates that would slog 8:30s some runs and be way behind the team but roll on everyone come race time. Aerobic development and recovering is key with most of your mileage

easy run king wrote:

David S. Pumpkins wrote:

Are you faster than the rest of your team come race day? If not, the answer is...

C. Stop trying to win practice & run with the team.

I'm guessing this is the answer.

OP, are you the best runner on the team?

I’m 3rd behind two seniors who aren’t improving (because they are slacking). So no, I am not number 1, but I want to lead the team well next year when the seniors graduate.

Cmon man wrote:

how about this wrote:

Run more. Since you're not tired at the end of runs just hammer two more miles.

Don't listen to this fruit. Don't need to be tired after your mileage. How fast is the team going? How fast do you want to go? I had a few old teammates that would slog 8:30s some runs and be way behind the team but roll on everyone come race time. Aerobic development and recovering is key with most of your mileage

They go around 7:30, I want to go around 6:40

Bill Oregon wrote:

Cmon man wrote:

Don't listen to this fruit. Don't need to be tired after your mileage. How fast is the team going? How fast do you want to go? I had a few old teammates that would slog 8:30s some runs and be way behind the team but roll on everyone come race time. Aerobic development and recovering is key with most of your mileage

They go around 7:30, I want to go around 6:40

That’s way too big of a jump. If you want to run faster start with 7-7:20 pace. Don’t drop below 7. Gradual improvement of pace. Nothing crazy. But most importantly, listen to your body. Easy pace should be easy. If 7 flat pace feels fast or challenging back off.

How fast does your coach tell you to go? That is how fast you should go.

David S. Pumpkins wrote:

Are you faster than the rest of your team come race day? If not, the answer is...

C. Stop trying to win practice & run with the team.

Couldn't agree more. However, if you're having an off day and just need to run alone to gather your thoughts and clear your mind then run alone that way, but don't stand there and say 'you guys are too slow and i want to run faster without you guys.'

Run with your teammates. I was in a similar situation when I was in HS, but I decided to swallow my pride and run with my teammates at the slower pace. We started bonding and building greater team chemistry and we had a great season. I ran much faster that season than had I ran alone at a faster pace on my easy days. Just run with your team and try asking them if they're okay picking it up by say 5-10 seconds per mile, and if they say no, just swallow your pride and drop the issue and run with them. You can't win an easy day, but you can lose it. Don't overdo things.

Bill Oregon wrote:

Let’s say my team does their normal runs decently slow for a college team and I want to go faster- do I, A, bail on the team and just run a good pace on my own. Or B, talk to the team about doing runs faster and hope they agree?

Follow up to B, if they don’t agree, what do I do?

Are you significantly faster than the rest of your teammates in races?

theJeff wrote:

How fast does your coach tell you to go? That is how fast you should go.

bruh no its how fast ur body says u should go

Hshahdhsjah wrote:

Bill Oregon wrote:

They go around 7:30, I want to go around 6:40

That’s way too big of a jump. If you want to run faster start with 7-7:20 pace. Don’t drop below 7. Gradual improvement of pace. Nothing crazy. But most importantly, listen to your body. Easy pace should be easy. If 7 flat pace feels fast or challenging back off.

Lol, it’s not a “jump” it’s just the difference between my preferred pace and there’s. In the off season I did all my runs in the 6:30s casually (usually faster). In season when I ran with the team, I lost a ton of fitness and didn’t race very well. Now coming into track, I’m going to run my own pace instead of theirs so I can compete well

theJeff wrote:

How fast does your coach tell you to go? That is how fast you should go.

The coach doesn’t give us a specific pace, but I can say this- I’m not on scholarship to go out and crawl a couple miles and race mediocre times, I’m here to run well

Update: I’m currently in winter conditioning doing my runs around 6:30 (I’m home for break so I don’t have to worry about the team going slow). When I get back, I’m not going to run slow with them, I’m gonna get in great shape for the 10k so I make it to Nats. That’s the plan unless someone makes a better case

What workouts you do on the non-easy days ties into what pace you should be doing on your easy days. Training as a whole is a system, one piece can't be looked at in isolation.

I would suggest that you talk to your coach about this privately. Tell him you feel like you are going to slow, that it feels far to easy (if that is the case). Tell him that 6:40 pace still feels like a recovery pace for you and that is how fast you run alone in the off season and see what he says. He would hopefully be able to give you a good response.

If he gives you the green light to run faster, just tell your teammates you want to run faster and they're welcome to tag along. If you have a good relationship with them and say it in a polite and respectful way, I would hope that it won't cause a weird rift in the team, even if some don't want to pick it up that fast. Definitely give them an out with something like "if you feel your easy pace should be slower, don't let me force you to run too fast." Not everybody needs to do easy days at the same pace.