Mistake #1: Running Too Fast On Easy Days

AFAIK, that is not how Canova does the calculation.
To him, 50% of 5 min/mile pace means running 50% slower. So he would add 2.5 mins to make it 7:30 min/mile pace.

The following is from an old article on Renato Canova:

A Note on Renato Canova's math
Renato Canova computes many of the paces he prescribes based on percentages of an athlete's personal record. It's important to discuss how this is calculated, because it is not straightforward. For example, if we say "run at 90% of 5:00 mile pace," many people would divide 5:00 by 0.90 and get 5:33.3 minutes per mile. Renato, however, does his math differently. To him, deviations from PR pace are measured quite literally in per cent—parts of one hundredth of the original pace. So, when Renato says "90% of 5:00 pace," he means "10% slower than 5:00 pace." To compute this, you do the following:
5:00/100*10 + 5:00 = 5:30 pace
Here are two simple formulas that will aid you in calculating "Renato Canova percents":
To calculate the resultant pace N by going P percent of race race (RP)
N = RP*(2-P/100)
As you can verify yourself, this formula works equally well if P is greater or less than 100 percent. For 110% of 5-minute mile pace, N = 5*(2-110/100) = 4.5 minutes per mile, or 4:30 mile pace. For 90% of 5k pace, N = 5*(2-90/100) = 5.5 minutes per mile or 5:30 mile pace.
To calculate what percentage P (faster or slower) than race pace (RP) some new pace N is, use:
P = 100*(2-N/RP)

Or two runners with similar race speed, but different physiology.

A very slow twitch runner can run faster on their easy days, than a more fast twitch runner, as they will generate less lactate and recover much quicker. The harder workouts will also require more recovery for the FT runner.

The problem with Canova's method is that velocity is not measured by time/distance. It's measured by distance/time.

So if a car is moving 60 mph, half as fast (50% slower) is 30 mph (correct method), not 40mph (only 33% slower- Canova method).

Strava, has a lot to answer for!

No one key fits every lock.

I personally know two elite runners that both have multiple national records between them that do not do many "easy" runs as the are defined here.

Further, you can't apply the same percentages to a hobby jogger running a 4 hour Marathon at 9 minute pace and tell them to spend the majority of their runs at 11 minute pace or whatever that works out to be (I didn't do the math for this group). It just doesn't work for all of them.

I have some runners I train fast and others need more recovery. It's about durability, adaptation periods, what limits them, etc. Even the tapers are different for my athletes.

In speaking generalities the adaptation graphs are correct and I have used them also many times with my athletes, but all are different. The art of coaching...

Listen to me, but you will not.

Third, running more miles at a slower pace will take more time. Recreational runners are training given a set of constraints (access to tracks/gyms/off road routes, coaching, S&C, nutrition, time constraints, kid responsibilities, job etc). Not all runners can afford the extra couple of hours out of their week.

Having said that, I agree that running as slowly as you can get away with on recovery days is great for the legs.

The whole Fast twitch vs. slow twitch thing is so overblown. Most nonelites are somewhere in the middle and use their muscle fiber typology as a BS excuse to train incorrectly I.e. run too fast on their easy days.

PRs alone don’t tell the whole story either. Case in point, Andreas Almgren. He ran 1:45 when he was like 18. Fast twitch right? A 1:45 800m man pre super shoes and bicarb. Well, if you look at him now, sub-27 10k and sub-60 half, surely he’s slow twitch then? He trains high mileage and a ton of double threshold. But his 1:45 fast twitch physiology surely can’t support such training!

Ed Whitlock and Gene Dykes had very different training styles. Dykes ran his "easy" runs much faster among other things. If they had done the other guy's training, both would have been much less successful.

Actually, your Almgren example shows that most elites are somewhere in the middle. The true fast twitch elites runners are in the sprint (400m and below) and the true slow twitch elites are in the ultras (because 42.195km is too short for them). Elites who compete in distances between 800m and 42.195km are neither extremes.

Maybe you don't have many of the former among the recreational runners because they are likely to take up other hobbies. But I think there are many of the latter, and most of them are racing 5km to 42.195km instead of ultras.

The problem with that is that 50% slower than 5 min/mile pace IS NOT 7:30/mile pace. 50% slower means half the velocity, so It's 10min/mile pace. That's a fact. Canova's coming up with his own made-up definition of 50% slower, which the rest of the scientific world disagrees with.

By Canova's formula what percent slower than 5 min/mile would 10 min/mile be? Let's see: 10=5*(2-(0/100)), so 100% slower

What about 12 min/mile?

12=5*(2-(-40/100))

So you would be running -40% slower (NEGATIVE 40% slower? - what's that?)

Obviously nonsense.

Nothing slower than 10:00/mile has a percent slower than 5 min/mile that makes any sense in Canova's system (not that any of the other percentages slower or faster made sense, either).

Grassrunner, everyone understands this. I don't know who you think you're teaching.

What I don't understand is why you're so insulting to Canova's method. First, you're taking a formula that he didn't even write. Someone else wrote it to assist people in doing the calculations for Canova's training. Then you come up with some extreme numbers that break the formula even though you'd never encounter those numbers in Canova's training. You're the one introducing the nonsense!

That formula aside, you're taking Canova's shorthand and interpreting it in terms of various phrases which it never meant. So again, you are the one introducing the nonsense.

Now, it's understandable that you keep thinking of things in terms of speed because Canova himself writes "pace" and because that calculator is a pace calculator, etc. But you'd put your mind at ease if you'd just think of Canova's percentages as based on time rather than pace. So while 5:30min/mi isn't technically 10% slower than 5:00min/mi because they're speeds, running a mile in 5:30 did take the runner 10% longer than running it in 5:00. But in casual speech do we say they took 30 seconds longer or that they were 30 seconds slower? So you can see how "time" and "pace" and the words we use around them begin to blend.

Before everyone had GPS watches and it became so common think in terms of pace, it wasn't so weird to think of everything in terms of time. You had a certain course you'd run your tempos on or your long runs and you'd get splits at certain landmarks with your stopwatch. You might not know the exact distances. And you might see little point in converting the times into paces even if you did know the exact distances. It's just as well to use the times.

Same for the track. It is funny to see someone who was never on a track team and has only ever run with a GPS watch get to a track for the first time.When they do intervals on the roads, they'll program their watch to automatically take a split 1200m and when the rep is over, they'll think "I did this rep at 4:50 pace" without taking any notice at all of what time they ran for the 1200. They've got no sense of what any of their splits mean and they have to keep thinking of them in terms of min/mi. It's like someone moving to/from a centigrade/fahrenheit country and constantly converting things back to the numbers they're familiar with rather than just learning what's "room temp" or "hot" or "cold" in the new system.

Anyway, the advantage of Canova's use of percentages on time rather than pace is that it makes it easier to apply the adjustments for any distance ... As well as for pace, since pace is just a matter of time on two particular distances - the mile or the kilometer! That is, as long as one can get over the awful awful transgression of doing percentages based on time and then talking about them in terms of speed! What would our Physics teacher think of us...

So again, think about people training by using stopwatches around known distances (whether on the track or a particular loop on the roads or trail), and how silly it'd be to work in terms of pace rather than time. You have to refer to pace once to get your baseline numbers from your race time or goal race time, like if your MP (or goal MP) is 3:00/km then 800m reps at 100% MP are done at 2:24. Some loop you've measured at 9.6km would be 28:48, etc etc. Then you can easily calculate what times you're aiming for in your workout for each distance at various percentages without having to put things back in terms of pace. You just apply the percentage to the time, no matter the distance.

(1) I thought elites reallllly backed off on their easy days in part to alleviate the “mechanical strain” arising from their very very fast capabilities. Is the alleviation of mechanical strain from slowing 5 min miles down to say 7 min miles equal to a comparable reduction starting from an 8 or 9 or 10 min mile?

(2) Is there a % of max HR floor to any of this where it gets silly slow?

Agreed. I got carried away.

This is a fantastic article. I agree with you that the majority of people do their easy runs too fast. Especially people in that level between 32-40 min 10k range. I'd be interested to see what the best of the best were doing 30 years ago. The important thing to realize, it depends on how many workouts you do and what the intensity level is. It depends on your lifestyle. It depends on how much mileage you run. It all just depends. The speed of your easy days are not going to be the thing that pushes you to your PR. Slow down and be patient.

Mistake #2:

Running easy pace too slow.

30-40 years ago? Pretty hammered the easy days. That’s the time period we’re schools like Arkansas were notorious for doing 80-90mpw and rarely being over 6 min pace. Go back farther and guys like Ron Clarke were harming 10 milers in like sub 55 mins every day.

Some people do run easy days too hard. But most are in that reasonable range of 90-180s off your 5k pace.

these things go in cycles. Remember 15 years ago where speeding up easy runs was AlSals special sauce in turning Mo into a world beater?