Can you really run slow to run fast?

Maybe.

We don't know enough about your training to guess.

Monday-Easy run 30-60 min

Tuesday-Intervals 400-1000 (varying workouts each week some distance oriented some timed)

Wednesday-30-60 easy running

Thursday-Tempo run at 10k pace or 1600s with 2 minutes of restx3

Friday-Easy Run 30-60

Saturday-60-90 minute progression run

Sunday-Rest

Is typically my week. After reading some material was thinking of slowing down the easy runs even more. Guess their is some alleged benefit of mitochondria and cappilaries to doing that?

slowing down your slow runs to aerobic level and keeping your hard runs at a high level and being able to run faster.

the claim that running slowly can make you run faster is probably true only of a beginner. and in this context I would consider a beginner to be someone who has been training regularly for less than one year. for them, running slowly improves capillary density, improves heart function, develops lung capacity, improves aerobic capacity, improves enzyme production, stimulates neuro-muscular pathways, increases muscle capacity and probably ten other things I can't think of right now. all of these together will mean that they will, without even trying or thinking about it or doing anything special or wonderful in their training, be able to run faster, aerobically. this is what takes a sedentary couch potato to running 5k in 25 minutes.

when you've been training for a while, running slowly still gives you all these benefits, but to a smaller degree, and it makes much less difference to your overall aerobic running. at this point in your athletic development, this slow running allows for full recovery from more intense training. training is, after all, a two-step process. first you stress the body, then you recover. in recovery your body adapts to the stress of the training so that you are better able to meet that stress in future. it is therefore in recovery that you actually acquire the benefits of the training that you do. so running slowly to allow full recovery means that you both get the full benefit of the training you have done, and you are properly rested to train some more. therefore, slow recovery runs allow an athlete to maintain a level of high intensity training that in turn permits them to run faster.

cheers.

Think of it as increasing mileage to gain endurance, not as running slow to run fast. Based on your bare-bones schedule it is almost certain that you could improve using this approach.

Thank you both for the replies makes much sense. Getting injured by doing harder work and not recovering has probably been my #1 downfall.

You mentioned my barebones running but I read where you should have 3 key workouts a week and the rest easy. With above race pace(speed), sustained pace like a tempo, and a long run what am I missing?

Appreciate the help and insight folks.

I think 3 key runs are well enough and the easy runs are fine. Me personally my .02 are give it a shot and if you're key runs are slipping than clearly pick it up but I see no big deal in slowing down your easy runs if the key ones aren't regressing

Rather than say "slow" it should be "easy". Run easy to get faster. To say run "slow" is misleading. A 2:20 marathoner to go out and train at 13:00 pace won't make her faster. But doing more over volume at an easier effort (vs. running too hard too often) might.

dctor wrote:

Rather than say "slow" it should be "easy". Run easy to get faster. To say run "slow" is misleading. A 2:20 marathoner to go out and train at 13:00 pace won't make her faster. But doing more over volume at an easier effort (vs. running too hard too often) might.

Fair enough, I'm not really hurting myself if on my easy days I ran at a 9-10 easy pace vs say 8-9 pace for the same amount of time.

Easy is all about recovery right but still using the lungs a bit.

So as long as my hard runs aren't slowing I'm good?

YES.

And in many cases, I think that is how it should be done.

In high school, I had tried for three years to go under 10:20 in the 3200, and I never could seem to have a breakthrough. Even with all the speedwork I did. I progressed my mileage the most during my senior year -- to around 70-80 miles per week -- with zero intense speed workouts. Barely any threshold workouts either.

And you know what I ran, for my first race, after many, many easy miles?

10:04.

High quality, low quantity always led to over-training and injury for me. Now I believe that quantity is quality, and most runs should be easy. Finish each run feeling exactly how you started. And if you do workouts, stop immediately if anything hurts. Don't stick to a certain pace, instead run whatever is truly easy on the day. For me, that is anywhere between 6:30 and 8:00 pace.

If your "easy" is 9-10 minute miles, then run them. Then run more. Eventually your "easy" will get faster.

This is an awesome thread. Good quality info and nobody is being an a-hole, unnecessarily argumentative or insulting, bringing politics into it, etc.

Kipchoge does his easy runs 50% slower than his marathon race pace, but of course he runs a ton of miles.

For a 2:37 marathoner/16:00 5K guy that would be 9:00 miles.

So, I gave this a shot last fall. After consistent injuries for years and running 25mpw with all of the quality workouts you could want, I bit the bullet and slowed down my easy days from 7:00 pace to 8:30-8:45 pace. Hit consistent 45-55mi weeks. Did some striders after 3-4 runs per week (4x100-150). No workouts to speak of. My 10k went from 37:10 to 36:00. Again, no consistent fast running other than striders (occasionally I’d push the pace for maybe 10-15’ at the end of a run). I had one run about 2 weeks before that 10k where I went out, felt great and went with it and split 6.1 in 36:45.

I didn’t race any shorter races, my 5k best is 17:10 and I think with 2-3 weeks of sharpening I could’ve easily hit that.

For me, it worked. Slowing down meant I could run more, and running more made me a better runner.

I try to do most of my easy and recovery runs trying to keep my HR below my Maffetone HR (180-age+5 for being healthy and having competitive progress). This helps me to keep my easy runs from being at too fast a pace (my easy run pace range is 7:00-7:45 while my HMP is 5:59 and GMP is 6:17-6:29). I do a lot of easy running to increase my mileage (to a peak of 120 miles for this Boston training cycle).

Your slow runs don't need to be that slow.

+1

Well done on that improvement.

For the OP, as someone said earlier, "slow" is relative to your ability/current level of fitness. Slow for a 30 minute 10k runner is a different slow to that of a 45 minute 10k runner.

Iwearatoupe wrote:

Monday-Easy run 30-60 min

Tuesday-Intervals 400-1000 (varying workouts each week some distance oriented some timed)

Wednesday-30-60 easy running

Thursday-Tempo run at 10k pace or 1600s with 2 minutes of restx3

Friday-Easy Run 30-60

Saturday-60-90 minute progression run

Sunday-Rest

Is typically my week. After reading some material was thinking of slowing down the easy runs even more. Guess their is some alleged benefit of mitochondria and cappilaries to doing that?

What about slowing down workouts?

Running "tempo" at 10k pace every week = burying yourself.

If you're relatively low mileage (as it seems) you're fine running your easy runs in high-end aerobic state (someone calls it "steady") but your workouts shoud be treated like training not races.

Yes. I improved my marathon time from 3-55 in November 2016 (as a totally clueless newbie) to 3-27 (read a couple of books) in September 2017. The biggest change I made was slowing down on easy days from 8-30 to 9-30 minute miles.

In Henry Rono's autobiography he says that when he was at the beginning of his running career he saw Lasse Viren, who was on a training trip to Kenya, crawling along the road during one of his runs. He wrote that he decided if an Olympic champion trained that slowly, he would as well. And he did.

There are plenty of people who run fast and train very slowly. There are plenty of people who run fast and train fast. If you're going to do your distance work slowly you need to have something in the mix that's faster. People like Ed Whitlock and Bob Deines raced frequently. Others have some faster sessions regularly.