Mistake #1: Running Too Fast On Easy Days

Agreed, this is how Canova calculates percentages of pace. It is also the method used in the Martin Coe book, which is one of the bibles of training.

e.g. 50% of 5 min/mile pace is 7:30 min/mile (5 times 1.5). IMO, this is the most mathematically logical way to do it.

Jakob runs his easy runs at 6:10 mile pace.

1.5 times 5k pace could be a good quick converter.

I don't think you're correctly articulating the "bad mechanics" argument. It's not that running slowly is literally counterproductive. It's that the movement patterns are so dissimilar to running at race pace that it's more like cross training than running. Faster runners can run at a low percentage of VO2max while still maintaining a stride that has a lot in common with their racing stride. Recreational runners, in order to go at such a low intensity, are engaged in very different movement patterns. And while it's true that African runners do just shuffle around sometimes, they also do a lot of their "easy" mileage very fast.

I think there are a few problems with these arguments.

First, there's nothing necessarily inconsistent about saying that someone needs to run fewer miles to avoid injury AND that they should do those miles a bit faster than someone who runs much higher mileage. We're talking about relatively small differences in intensity and relatively large differences in volume. Coaches and athletes have figured out, through a ton of trial and error, that most recreational runners can have faster relative paces when their volume is low. There are a lot of possible reasons for this, but the most plausible is simply that volume and intensity are different kinds of stresses. High intensity is MUCH more demanding on the cardiovascular and endocrine systems, but only slightly more demanding on connective tissues (which do respond to training, but take a long time).

I say that as someone sympathetic to the idea that most people should increase their mileage. I was routinely hitting 130 miles/week when I was a bit younger, and it paid off. I also encourage my athletes to increase mileage, but it's a long term process that happens season-by-season.

Second, even if we assume that what works for extreme genetic outliers will also work just as well for average individuals, we have to recognize that they are at different stages of athletic development. Elites didn't always run high mileage; they worked up to it. If you really want to emulate them, you should be looking at data from when they were younger and slower. Most of them were probably doing their easy paces in high school at pretty close to the same as now, despite being much, much faster over 10km. Someone with 10+ years of high level training is not getting much aerobic development from easy runs. They have to run pretty darned fast to approach even their first aerobic threshold. Recreational runners, by contrast, can slightly elevate their blood lactate levels and reduce muscle oxygen levels, without having to absolutely hammer. This is a training advantage that recreational runners have. If you insist that they stay at a lower relative intensity, they could be missing out on a lot of tempo-typse stimuli.

Anyway, for what it's worth, my personal take is that the biggest mistake is that people either do all their easy days too easy or all of them too hard. There's a place for shuffling around at whatever pace is comfortable, with zero strain. There's also a place for non-workout runs where you're still applying a bit of pressure and moving at a decent clip. My personal rule of thumb is that your average weekly pace should get slower the closer you get to a peak race. Early in the season you can run faster easy days because you're doing easier workouts. Later, you do pretty hard workouts, and you need to go easy to truly recover. But you can't to it too long or you stagnate.

Cheers.

I tend to think that a lot of the best training approaches are used by elites before the science catches.

Therefore, perhaps there's something that amateur runners are missing if they aren't ever running in zone 1. It must be providing some (possibly significant) benefit if elite runners are spending roughly 60% of their training volume at this low-intensity.

As others have said, I've converted pace into speed before making the calculations - in the same way that Canova does it.

I give a rundown of the formula I've used both in the article and also earlier in this thread. But I'll do it again:

A 4:10/km pace equates to 14.4km/h.

63% of that is 10.08km/h.

Which equates to 5:57/km pace.

It's a fair point, and in this situation, people will have to make their own adjustments.

As I mention in the piece, for the most part elites tend to stick fairly flat and fast paths or dirt roads.

If you can collect a record of every easy run he does in a two week period - and show that the average is 6:10/mile, then I'll believe it. Otherwise, it's just hearsay.

In my experience, there's a big difference between what an athlete says they do (or what others say they do), and what they actually do.

Even so, that's 71% of the pace of his 10k PB (27:28 in the first half of the Copenhagen HM) and possibly below 70% of what he's actually capable of. Additionally, he is just one athlete, whereas the results in the piece are from a random pool of 24 elite athletes, which gives a better representation of what's happening across the population of elite runners.

This first highlighted point is just something you've made up (or heard other people say, that has no basis in fact). Watch any elite runner on YouTube (Conner Mantz for example), and you'll see that they are absolutely shuffling on easy runs. That is, their mechanics while jogging are very, very different from their racing mechanics. They have to be, because they're running 2/3rds of the speed (sometimes slower) of their race paces, which means that unless their cadence slows to the point of a bound, they have to adopt a very shuffly stride.

To the second highlighted point, if you want a "tempo-type" stimulus, do a tempo run - and then program recovery around it. We're talking about recreational runners here, who often don't have miraculous powers of recovery - and yet you seem to be implying that they have a greater ability to recover (pound for pound) than elite runners; who aren't working full time jobs and who've built an enormous capacity for load, and who (as you say) are running much further below their first threshold on easy runs than 'rec-runners'.

Anyway, I give a fairly lengthy explanation on "supercompensation" in the piece - and why trying to squeeze in a moderate workout (which is what you're essentially recommending) in between hard workout days isn't an effective approach - and so I won't go into it further here.

I appreciate the comments, but unless you can produce some evidence for the claims you make, then I just have to take them as opinion.

*that should read 70%.

Apologies.

Recently Coach MK of All Heart Run Club posted a YouTube video explaining why easy days should be done faster than just an easy effort. He gave reasons of too much ground contact time and poor mechanics actually leading to LESS recovery with running easy. He also mentioned getting into a mental mindset of resetting what "easy" means so that eventually everything just naturally speeds up. Normally I like his stuff but this video really set off my BS detector. The video is short if you want to watch and would be curious on your thoughts.

I'm not fast by any means. My current fitness is only about a 6:00 mile and 22:00 5k. My easy pace is around 12:00/mile and sometimes slower if I'm fried from workouts. I regularly run by so many people in my neighborhood who are busting out what looks like race pace efforts. It's always a hit to my ego but I know I'm probably faster than most of them. I think this is the struggle most people have. They don't want to look like a slow hobbyjoggers so they blast all their easy days

I think it's an extremely misguided approach.

For one, his reasons for doing it seem to have more to do with vanity than performance.

Also, he's completely ignoring the pattern of stress and recovery (supercompensation) which is how we improve.

If he wants to change the training stimulus then he'd be better served focussing on the stress portion (workouts) of his supercompensation cycle, rather than changing the recovery phase to another stress.

Ultimately, If this were a better approach than running more slowly in between hard workouts, then we would see elites doing it, but we don't.

Think of it this way: running at 50% of 5 min/mi means running half as fast, so if you're running half as fast, it takes twice as long, so 10:00 min/mile.

If running 66.6% of 5 min/mi pace, means moving 2/3 as fast, so 7:30 min/mile pace, ie., for every 2 miles covered at 7:30 min/mile, you cover 3 miles at 5 min/mile.

To add to this, think how insane the spread is between times and effort levels. I can be running a hard day for me at 7:00/pace and I could be passing up some Olympic medalists on their easy days.

Just because someone is running slow doesn't mean they're slow. I think most runners need to handle that mindset better. There's no prize for performing well on our easy days. I could pass Jakob on an easy run and he'd still beat me by 2:00 in a 1500m. So if elites don't care about looking slow on their easy days, why should we?

Absolutely.

I think a lot of it comes down to insecurity. People don't want to look slow in front of random strangers.

But it's simply a matter of delayed gratification. Sticking to a slower pace on your easy day may not be as impressive in the moment, but it tends to produce better results on race day - and that's the thing that matters to a serious runner.

I'd like to add to this, because this argument really gets under my skin. I see it bandied around so often, and yet, it's absolutely baseless.

The change in mechanics for an elite who races at 3:00/km and does easy runs at 4:30/km is directly proportional to an amateur who races at 4:00/km and does easy runs at 6:00/km. While the 6:00/km pace may not be carried out with as "good mechanics" as the 4:30/km pace, neither is the 4:00/km race pace compared with the 3:00/km race pace. Therefore, the 6:00/km pace is just as specific to the amateur's race pace of 4:00/km, as the 4:30/km pace is to the elite runner's 3:00/km pace.

In fact, there may even be an argument that the 6:00/km pace is more specific to the amateur's racing mechanics than the 4:30/km pace is for the elite.

6:00/km is 10km/h and 4:00/km is 15km/h. The difference between these two speeds is 5km/h.

In contrast, 4:30/km is 13.33 km/h and 3:00/km is 20km/h. The difference between these two speeds is 6.67km/h.

Therefore, would it not require a larger shift in mechanics to produce a 6.67km/h increase in speed than it would to produce a 5km/h increase?

Right OK. Thanks for replying.

Seems like there are different ways to calculate % of pace and the calculator I use must use a different way.

I didn't know that, but it is slightly confusing. But to go back to the point of the article, I should be running my easier runs slower. You'd recommend 6:00/km or slower. I definitely don't run that slow on my easy days currently - it's a bit of a leap of faith!

For what is worth, that's exactly 1.5 * 5K pace.