8:30 is currently the pace I go during easy runs. How do you get your easy pace faster overtime? It’s been the same pace for me for 2 years
8:30 is currently the pace I go during easy runs. How do you get your easy pace faster overtime? It’s been the same pace for me for 2 years
Run more
Easy pace is as fast or as slow as you need it to be. Putting a time on it can hurt your training in the long run, especially if you’re pushing for a fast easy pace.
Nick Symmonds’ easy pace ranged from 7:00-8:00 a mile when he ran 3:56 and 1:42 for the mile and 800.
Moral of the story is you should focus on making your workout paces faster and let your easy paces do whatever they want.
When I’m getting fit my easy pace naturally drifts from 7:45ish per mile down to about 6:50-7:10
It took me 16 years to go from 7:00 to 8:30 as my easy pace.
Assuming that your easy pace is very roughly 60% slower than your mile race pace, it takes approximately as long as it takes you to get your mile PR down from 5:30 to 4:20. So maybe four years for a talented high school freshman new to running.
runningislife3 wrote:
8:30 is currently the pace I go during easy runs. How do you get your easy pace faster overtime? It’s been the same pace for me for 2 years
Why do you want your easy pace to be faster? Try running easier on easy days and harder/faster on hard days.
survey says wrote:
Run more
You are basically correct, although your easy pace (measured by a certain heart rate) should improve even by just being consistent.
runningislife3 wrote:
8:30 is currently the pace I go during easy runs. How do you get your easy pace faster overtime? It’s been the same pace for me for 2 years
What are you PRs and mileage, and how old are you? If you are young and not getting faster, the first question should be about whether you are running easy days too fast. Counterintuitively, that will undermine your efforts to improve.
The fact that you can't simply decide to run faster on easy days suggests that they are not really easy enough. You shouldn't be worrying about running faster than 8:30 until you can break 18:00 for 5K. Even then, there are a lot of aspects of training that would probably pay better dividends than a faster easy pace.
it's only going to get worse wrote:
It took me 16 years to go from 7:00 to 8:30 as my easy pace.
LOL! Yeah, averaged in 7s into my early 30s, now I'm 60 and my easy pace average is 8s-9s. Besides an easy warmup mile, I do not see why really fast runners would want to plod at 8s? Just don't make much sense to me.
So once you run a faster 5k adjust accordingly. Your easy pace should be based on your CURRENT race ability.
Easy pace should be 5k pace plus 2 minutes per mile
8:30 is for a 18 minute 5ker
8:00 is for a 17 minute 5ker
7:30 is for a 16 minute 5ker
7:00 is for a 15 minute 5ker
Don’t put the cart before the horse or you’ll just keep overtraining and not improve.
No-nonsense on your easy days. Do NOT look like a mommy slogger. If you're too tired to run a decent clip then cut the mileage short or don't run at all. Contrary to LetsRun belief, non-workout runs should not be as easy as you want. Ron Clarke (boomer, but still fast) ran 20 mile runs for training often at 5:20 pace. How do you think he got to that point? I'll tell you it wasn't from running 8 minute pace.
Running isn't 1 dimensional. You need multiple ingredients to be good, and that includes being able to run at a fast pace even though it feels easy. Even the ancient Arthur Lydiard who made his athlete Peter Snell (800 gold) do many junk miles, made him and his teammates run at a "steady pace" in training. Lyd also made his athletes run routes with super hills.
By the way, I see some 5:00 girls run some of their easy runs at sub 7 pace. They know what they're doing.
Sham 69 wrote:
No-nonsense on your easy days. Do NOT look like a mommy slogger. If you're too tired to run a decent clip then cut the mileage short or don't run at all. Contrary to LetsRun belief, non-workout runs should not be as easy as you want. Ron Clarke (boomer, but still fast) ran 20 mile runs for training often at 5:20 pace. How do you think he got to that point? I'll tell you it wasn't from running 8 minute pace.
Running isn't 1 dimensional. You need multiple ingredients to be good, and that includes being able to run at a fast pace even though it feels easy. Even the ancient Arthur Lydiard who made his athlete Peter Snell (800 gold) do many junk miles, made him and his teammates run at a "steady pace" in training. Lyd also made his athletes run routes with super hills.
I'd go along with this, there is a mindset here and quite a few places that training just involves 2 maybe 3 'workouts', with everything being filler miles and not really working out. That's nonsense, all runs are workouts and to get faster you'll need to progress on all runs not just your twice weekly 'workouts'. As you say Clarke didn't get to 20 mile Sunday runs as 5.20 by plodding about lots at 8.30 pace whilst waiting for the next workout day, no he likely ran his arse off even on 'easy' days. Common sense needs to be applied here, but really to get fitter ergo faster you need to well..run faster.
Race faster first wrote:
So once you run a faster 5k adjust accordingly. Your easy pace should be based on your CURRENT race ability.
Easy pace should be 5k pace plus 2 minutes per mile
8:30 is for a 18 minute 5ker
8:00 is for a 17 minute 5ker
7:30 is for a 16 minute 5ker
7:00 is for a 15 minute 5ker
Don’t put the cart before the horse or you’ll just keep overtraining and not improve.
So what about the elite runners out there that run slower than what you put and race a lot faster? Scott Fauble 2:09 marathoner (about 15:17 per 5k pace) and his usual easy pace is around 7:30. Cheptegei, Morceli and Makhloufi have supposedly done easy recovery days as slow as 8-10 minute miles. It's best to just focus on feel and occasionally look at heart rate to ensure you aren't doing too much junk work in zone 3 heart rate.
Sham 69 wrote:
No-nonsense on your easy days. Do NOT look like a mommy slogger. If you're too tired to run a decent clip then cut the mileage short or don't run at all. Contrary to LetsRun belief, non-workout runs should not be as easy as you want. Ron Clarke (boomer, but still fast) ran 20 mile runs for training often at 5:20 pace. How do you think he got to that point? I'll tell you it wasn't from running 8 minute pace.
Running isn't 1 dimensional. You need multiple ingredients to be good, and that includes being able to run at a fast pace even though it feels easy. Even the ancient Arthur Lydiard who made his athlete Peter Snell (800 gold) do many junk miles, made him and his teammates run at a "steady pace" in training. Lyd also made his athletes run routes with super hills.
Says the 18-year old who knows more than LRC and Lydiard. Uh-huh.
PSA: When in doubt, do the opposite of what Sham 69 says. He has no sense of how limited his experience is.
"Mommy slogger?" When you're trying to figure out why women aren't interested in talking to you, think about what you just typed.
I'm getting many matches on Tinder right now.
But I troll them instead because bros>hoes.
not the healthiest runner wrote:
So what about the elite runners out there that run slower than what you put and race a lot faster? Scott Fauble 2:09 marathoner (about 15:17 per 5k pace) and his usual easy pace is around 7:30. Cheptegei, Morceli and Makhloufi have supposedly done easy recovery days as slow as 8-10 minute miles. It's best to just focus on feel and occasionally look at heart rate to ensure you aren't doing too much junk work in zone 3 heart rate.
There are different kinds of runners. Those with quite a robust frame/quite a bit of muscle can tolerate more muscle damage, and often respond well to running quite quickly all the time. Ron Clarke was of this type for example; it's a big generalisation, but those of traditional Northern European or 'Anglo Saxon' ethnicity/body type often are runners of this type. Thin, wiry types often respond to better to the very slow on easy days type training. Most African distance runners fall into the latter category, and since they are very successful, people copy them without it necessarily being advisable. Wejo is/was apparently also of the thin, wiry type, which may explain why this training suited him; again, it doesn't mean one should extrapolate to recommend it to everyone.
for every 13 minute kenyan who does easy mileage at >8 there's a dozen upper-tier NCAA women who run all their mileage <7
What does a 16-minute female 5K-runner's sub-7 training pace have to do with the OP's question? He appears to be a 19-minute 5-K runner who tries to run faster than 8:30 miles on easy days but can't.
half of the posts in this topic have nothing to to with the OP's question. but sure, here's my answer to the OP's question:
after 4 years of HS track i feel that i was probably capable of doing a high volume of "easy" mileage at 7:00. i was running mid 16's in XC, 2:00 800m in track (never ran the mile because we had 5 or 6 guys capable of 4:30, and i was the only one who could run a 400m)
however in reality, we did 2 workouts a week and raced 2x a week. so there weren't really easy aerobic days. there were hard days and recovery days at like 7:50s. over the summer and in preseason we probably did a lot of 7:15/mi running, but we were much more fit mid-season.
i came back to running this year after many years off, doing a lot more standard aerobic running and here were my paces as correlated with 5k tt's throughout the year. i am running 30mpw on 5 days and the occasional 35mpw on 6 days, and feel these are appropriate paces for the mileage.
jan 23:00 - 9:00 (15mpw, too fast but every is a tempo run anyway when you're fat)
feb 21:00 - 9:00 (25mpw)
mar 20:00 - 8:20 (hit 30mpw, which is still where my mileage is at now. i think at this point i stopped considering myself fat)
may 19:00 - 8:10 (
august 18:30 - 8:00
nov 18:00 - 7:50 (where i am right now)
i'd probably have to tick it down 10-20s per mile if i wanted to do 50mpw starting right now.