RECOVERY RUN MYTHS

Recovery runs and “Easy” runs are two different things

A recovery run is where you’re just thrashed and you’ll probably be slow, and that’s okay. Instead of forcing it you just let your body go slower and you’ll be feeling better soon

An easy run is at a good aerobic pace and isn’t like jogging. There’s a lot of these in base and early season. In mid to late season with lots of intervals you’ll have more recovery runs because you just have to worry about recovering for track work, while early on you wanna get solid miles in

There is no difference between a recovery run and an easy run. If you can't run easy pace for a run, you've overtrained and worked out too hard. If you're pushing at all on an easy run, you're going too fast and should be saving it for workouts.

Kvothe wrote:

There is no difference between a recovery run and an easy run. If you can't run easy pace for a run, you've overtrained and worked out too hard. If you're pushing at all on an easy run, you're going too fast and should be saving it for workouts.

I do think there is a difference.

Recovery runs = Runs after a super-hard effort such as a race or high intensity workout. My recovery runs are 7:30 pace or slower, sometimes much slower.

Easy runs = Large majority of your mileage. The "I'm going for a run" pace, if that makes sense. For me that is 6:30-7:30 pace usually.

14:30 5K guy for a reference.

Easy Run= meant for aerobic endurance and should be done at a naturally occurring and conversational pace

Recovery Run= slower than your easy run. meant as a form of active recovery in which you hold back on the pace to provide less stress on the aerobic/anaerobic systems while still getting in your mileage

RobA wrote:

Kvothe wrote:

There is no difference between a recovery run and an easy run. If you can't run easy pace for a run, you've overtrained and worked out too hard. If you're pushing at all on an easy run, you're going too fast and should be saving it for workouts.

I do think there is a difference.

Recovery runs = Runs after a super-hard effort such as a race or high intensity workout. My recovery runs are 7:30 pace or slower, sometimes much slower.

Easy runs = Large majority of your mileage. The "I'm going for a run" pace, if that makes sense. For me that is 6:30-7:30 pace usually.

14:30 5K guy for a reference.

yea same thing for me - a recovery run is also usually shorter (30-45 mins) while an easy run can be up to 70 mins. Doing a 70 min recovery run kinda defeats the purpose.

Definitely a difference between recovery runs and easy runs for me. About ~1 minute per mile difference.

The purpose as I see it is that a recovery run is just meant to get the blood flowing in your legs and stave off muscle soreness and tightness. An easy run is an actual run, meant to be somewhat aerobic but conversational, and helps from a biomechanics/joints/cardiovascular system health standpoint.

It all comes down to what you are recovering from. Here's my myth:

As another has said, after a race, where you probably caused some microtearing, a recovery run serves to help in the repair process. It should be just fast enough to flush out the muscles. Otherwise, you normally do moderately easy runs between workouts, to let your body fully accomodate to the previous workout prior to another workout. These 'reminder' runs have to be brisk enough to reinforce all of the previously stimulated muscle fiber adaptations. If you run them too slowly you don't recruit all the slow twitch fibers, and their adaptations will backtrack, and only the central fibers will progress. That's partly the cause of plateauing endurance gains - running too slowly.

If you are a new runner, you should first attend to just those stringy slow twitch fibers, with high volume of slow runs. It takes over 12 weeks to start to noticeably develop more muscle size, and slow twitch fibers can grow 12% larger - probably a lot of that is due to increased glycogen storage, and not so much a big increase in muscle fibers. So, for a good base, you need probably 16 weeks of progressively slow to moderate running. Then, when you start to do speed work for the faster muscle fibers, those slow twitch fibers won't be so weak that they will get torn.

Kvothe wrote:

There is no difference between a recovery run and an easy run. If you can't run easy pace for a run, you've overtrained and worked out too hard. If you're pushing at all on an easy run, you're going too fast and should be saving it for workouts.

+1

There might be a slight difference in the paces, but the purpose of the workout is the same - getting in miles and regrouping before your next hard session.

Neither an easy run nor a recovery run should "feel" hard, the heart rate should be low, and you should be able to have a full conversation with no difficulty

Kvothe wrote:

There is no difference between a recovery run and an easy run. If you can't run easy pace for a run, you've overtrained and worked out too hard. If you're pushing at all on an easy run, you're going too fast and should be saving it for workouts.

Nonsense.

It’s really not nonsense though. The paces are not meant to be that different. Yea you might run a little faster in your easy days. But if your running over 45 seconds faster your likely running to fast for your easy run.

To me, an easy run is a milage run (50 - 90 minutes) while a recovery run is a 20 - 30 minute easy pace jaunt to get the legs moving and to clear some lactate.

Difference for me.

Recovery run is 4-6 miles the day (or two if needed) after a hard or long run.

Easy run is 6-10 at a comfortable pace.

Since there is little agreement in the definition of an easy run vs. a recovery run it is no surprise that we are having trouble agreeing on what the differences between them are or even if there is a difference at all. Is it pace, distance, feel? I know that not all slower mileage based runs are not created equal, but are those differences worth their own definitions? Maybe there are actually more than two definitions and easy vs. recovery is too simple. I think the important thing is to know what you are trying to get out of each day. I know on the workout calendars that I send to my athletes I usually use the word recovery day, but when they come to practice (remember back when we were allowed to have practice?) I might explain what we are trying to do that day very differently from one "recovery run" to the next.

yo!! wrote:

It’s really not nonsense though. The paces are not meant to be that different. Yea you might run a little faster in your easy days. But if your running over 45 seconds faster your likely running to fast for your easy run.

I typically do my easy runs around 7-7:30 pace and my heart rate is around 130-135 average (max is about 190-195) so I'm definitely not running these too fast. When marathon training, my workouts are typically 17-22 miles total with at least half of that at MP or LT pace, usually more like 75% of it. There's no way I'm only slowing down by 45 seconds the day after doing that. If you're only slowing down that much, you're running your recovery runs way too hard or your workouts way too easy.

recovery is you're "zone 1" and easy is your "zone 2"

Some of you guys are taking things that you've read a bit to literally. I can't tell if you're trying to demonstrate knowledge by Amelia Bedelia-ing us, and I really can't understand why you have such a strong personal connection to the information that you once read.

Every recovery run is an easy run. If you are recovering from an intense effort within that last day or two, then you can call your easy runs recovery runs if you want to. You probably also do easy runs a lot of other times that you wouldn't call them recovery runs. If you run by feel, then your "recovery" (easy runs that take place not long after intense efforts) runs will probably be at a slower pace.

The thing is, you also don't have to call your runs anything. You can actually go for a run and then not talk about it.

yo!! wrote:

It’s really not nonsense though. The paces are not meant to be that different. Yea you might run a little faster in your easy days. But if your running over 45 seconds faster your likely running to fast for your easy run.

For the love of God.

Exactly this.

Unless it is a typical 'workout' day (i.e. some reps/tempo run etc), I just log it as a friggin run. Sometimes they'r slow af, sometimes their pretty quick, but their just a friggin run.

Just run, baby!