Good discussion on recovery/easy runs.
I have only been running for four years and i am pretty slow so i am not sure i can add anything here. I tend to compare my paces with others by thinking about a pace offset; for example, my goal MP is about a minute slower than Pablo's (well, his old 2:30 goal!) so i usually add about a minute to his paces to put them into my own context. In fact, i had noticed awhile ago that he has considerably slowed down his easy runs to paces that make sense to me.
During marathon training periods when the long runs break me down, i tend to do short slow recovery runs at 8:40-9:10 pace which is around MP + 2 minutes (and as Pablo said, these are uncomfortably slow). Easy runs were MP + 45 to 90 seconds.
However, now that i am not doing long runs, i find that i don't need to do the slow recovery runs at all and that my easy runs are on the faster end of the range. I am not sure why this is happening. My hypothesis is that my body doesn't like long runs - and now that i am not running long i don't need the slow recovery runs. The alternative explanation is that I am in better shape!
Good luck to all! We've got some seriously fast guys posting here now. Where the hell are all my peers?