Can you get faster by just doing “easy”mileage (no speed)

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keepgoing wrote:

You're being pretty unnecessarily combative on this thread. The dude said various paced runs would come up when he was "feeling good and running the last few miles or so sub 6." For a really good runner, that can still be easy. The days when you're floating along, and just cruising, actually feel easy.

Also, strides are easy. If you do them right. Yes it is faster than slow, plodding running, but if you do 8 of them with plenty of rest and just practice running fast, guess what? It's easy!

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ddidididid wrote:

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i do r pace stuff wrote:

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FSmith wrote:
There is nothing stupid about doing 100% easy mileage during a period of building mileage.

Particularly, if building to a volume that has never been attained previously. This is largely an experiment and the body needs time to adapt. It does not need the added stress of speedwork, whatever the form that speedwork may take. It is always possible to catch up on the faster stuff later.

I do think too many are in a hurry to cram everything into a training block. This is short sighted.

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I agree with this. My best college xc season came after a summer of mileage & strides 2x a week. Didn't mess with any workouts at all (tempos, fartleks, whatever). Just tons of doubles, long runs, etc. However, this running wasn't all "easy". A lot of medium effort runs in there depending on how I felt on the day. Tons of like....feeling good and running the last few miles or so sub 6. Stuff like that. I think that stuff can transform you as a runner before any of the real workouts even begin.

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So basically you don't agree with it at all. You did speed work 2x/week and did some faster aerobic work on top of it. The fact that you didn't call them real workouts doesn't change what the were.

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So everyone what should my tempo pace be to stay within that aerobic area? around marathon pace or is that too slow? half marathon pace?

If you were a high school runner and ran an easy 40-50mpw every week between the State T&F meet and the first day of XC practice, you would be in very good shape for the upcoming season. Say you did this between your Soph and Junior summer break you would probably have a very successful XC season. Why? Mainly because most high school kids don't put in that kind of mileage on a consistent basis. You would also become strong from this and would have less chance of injury when the XC season arrives and the intensity of workouts begins.

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George213 wrote:

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CopperRunner wrote:

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Sham 69 wrote:
Yes. Better yet, add another interval workout and ditch the long run. Renato Canova says that long runs are only necessary for the marathon.

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Sham woke up and decided to know what he’s talking about today.

I’d take all of his advice except maybe the long run. Running for more than 50-60 minutes at a time helps your body learn to tap into different more efficient energy systems, and will greatly help expansion of your capillaries.

More miles at a time helps you mentally too. Not saying you should immediately jump into it, but once I got to the point where I was running 8-10 miles on regular days, along with 12-15 miles for my long runs (super easy sustainable pace, 7:15-7:30 for someone that races between 3:50-5:10 pace for 800-5k currently). This changed me from being the kind of person that really struggled with racing 3k-5k simply because of how long the race felt to someone that feels like those races were moreso becoming a test of sustained speed rather than endurance.

It’s kind of like how a 400m race will be hard and painful, but you never voluntarily slow down or think “maybe I should pretend I pulled a muscle to end this hell” cause it’s just a 400.

This last summer/fall base I did consistent build/reduction from 55 mpw to 75 mpw. I’d say about 90-95% of that mileage was just easy-moderate. In my experience, the mileage was the biggest factor in my improvement, but you should make sure to touch raw speed, speed endurance, and LT once a week each. This could be as simple as one plyo/hill sprint session, 6-8 100-200m reps after an easy run, and tempo work whether it be CV 400s (magic workout IMO. Not mentally taxing at all but gives you nearly the same gains as a tempo run) a 3-5 mile tempo run, or 3-4 mile reps at 5k pace with plenty of rest.

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Details on the CV 400s? How many reps and what is the rest? They sound interesting.

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ddidididid wrote:

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keepgoing wrote:

You're being pretty unnecessarily combative on this thread. The dude said various paced runs would come up when he was "feeling good and running the last few miles or so sub 6." For a really good runner, that can still be easy. The days when you're floating along, and just cruising, actually feel easy.

Also, strides are easy. If you do them right. Yes it is faster than slow, plodding running, but if you do 8 of them with plenty of rest and just practice running fast, guess what? It's easy!

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So what other workouts can I do? Daniels rep workouts feel easy so they are ok. Tempo runs feel on medium also so they are ok also. Short hills also feel pretty easy.

So know my week of easy running is
Monday 30 min tempo
Tuesday 8x400
Wednesday easy
Thursday 30 min tempo
Friday 10x10s hills
Saturday/sun easy

Does that really match what you think of when someone says 100% easy running? Or is 100% easy meaningless when you can do whatever you want as long as you say it was easy?

And if I am only doing zone 1 running but am dragging at the end of my 20 miler, am I no longer doing easy running?

Nobody debates that a high volume of easy running is the key for good endurance gains. But the idea that you can just skip doing the rest is sketchy at best. I am unaware of any programs that do 100% easy for more than a few weeks at the start. A lot don't do a lot of quality but just because it is low volume, doesn't mean that the quality isn't important.

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This is great news to me; I don't have natural speed but I have very good endurance, and I also WFH. This allows me to go out and nail 7-8 miles EZ between 60-70 mins. a day consistently, no injuries and with no stress. I can do the LR on Saturdays as well, and I also use Sun. and Fri. (before and after the long run) as 3-4 mile recovery runs. I throw in a tempo run on Wednesdays.

So:
Sun--3-4 EZ (breathing thru nose)
Mon--7-8 EZ or somewhat moderate, depending on mood
Tues--7-8 EZ
Wed--7 at tempo speed, faster than Monday
Thurs--6-7 EZ
Fri--3-4 EZ
Sat--10-14 LR right now, all EZ or a few miles faster-paced, depending on mood

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ddidididid wrote:

So what other workouts can I do? Daniels rep workouts feel easy so they are ok. Tempo runs feel on medium also so they are ok also. Short hills also feel pretty easy.

So know my week of easy running is
Monday 30 min tempo
Tuesday 8x400
Wednesday easy
Thursday 30 min tempo
Friday 10x10s hills
Saturday/sun easy

Does that really match what you think of when someone says 100% easy running? Or is 100% easy meaningless when you can do whatever you want as long as you say it was easy?

And if I am only doing zone 1 running but am dragging at the end of my 20 miler, am I no longer doing easy running?

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Another giver of +1 wrote:

The 8 x 400 (and intervals in general) can be easy if you're disciplined about pace and recovery. For example, 8 x 400 in 74s with 200 slow jog recovery is easy for a 15m 5k runner. The same in 66s with a 200 float in 40s would be a hard session.

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If you've only ever run <50mi weeks with workouts, and your 5k is around 18:00+, I suspect running a 4000mi year with regular drills and strides and no workouts would result in significant improvement. Is it the only way to improve your 5k time? Of course not, and it's probably not going to work for a 16:00 5k runner.

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hottytoddy99 wrote:
So everyone what should my tempo pace be to stay within that aerobic area? around marathon pace or is that too slow? half marathon pace?

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Run6556 wrote:

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hottytoddy99 wrote:
So everyone what should my tempo pace be to stay within that aerobic area? around marathon pace or is that too slow? half marathon pace?

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Since everyones definition of aerobic area differs, its hard to say. Some will say 99% of these events are aerobic, however you burn mostly carbs when you reach above 80% of max hr, which you will during both maraton and hm.

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twilight zone veteran wrote:

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MatthewXCountry wrote:

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ddidididid wrote:

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seikosha wrote:
Here’s my real world experience. Every year there is a big 5k in my neighborhood. I wasn’t a runner but one year I decided to run it. Not knowing anything about running, my strategy was to do 2 or 3 runs a week for a weekly total of 6-9 miles and each of those runs I’d do them as hard as I could. Every run was an attempt to go faster than my previous run.

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Yes if you don't train, easy running is better than that. It doesn't make it good training. Compare the 5k times of a guy who runs 50mpw easy and the one who does 50mpw with 1 workout/week were they run at say 10k pace. The second guy is likely to be 30s-60s faster.

Seriously we did this every year in XC. We would easy run over the summer and come back and run 18 min 5ks. 3 weeks later basically nothing other than the same mileage with 2 races/week(yes we were overraced😁) we were running 16 high on the same course.

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Yikes, at 2 races per week, you can only do easy days in-between. Good on your coach for not doing workouts over summer, you'd be burned out by the end of the season. Your races were your workouts.

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2 xc races a week was the standard in the 90s. I ran 5 races in 14 days two separate times my senior year and never went more than 10 days without racing from mid August to November. I didn't finish the season well but others did just fine on similar schedules.

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CopperRunner wrote:

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George213 wrote:

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CopperRunner wrote:

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Sham 69 wrote:
Yes. Better yet, add another interval workout and ditch the long run. Renato Canova says that long runs are only necessary for the marathon.

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Sham woke up and decided to know what he’s talking about today.

I’d take all of his advice except maybe the long run. Running for more than 50-60 minutes at a time helps your body learn to tap into different more efficient energy systems, and will greatly help expansion of your capillaries.

More miles at a time helps you mentally too. Not saying you should immediately jump into it, but once I got to the point where I was running 8-10 miles on regular days, along with 12-15 miles for my long runs (super easy sustainable pace, 7:15-7:30 for someone that races between 3:50-5:10 pace for 800-5k currently). This changed me from being the kind of person that really struggled with racing 3k-5k simply because of how long the race felt to someone that feels like those races were moreso becoming a test of sustained speed rather than endurance.

It’s kind of like how a 400m race will be hard and painful, but you never voluntarily slow down or think “maybe I should pretend I pulled a muscle to end this hell” cause it’s just a 400.

This last summer/fall base I did consistent build/reduction from 55 mpw to 75 mpw. I’d say about 90-95% of that mileage was just easy-moderate. In my experience, the mileage was the biggest factor in my improvement, but you should make sure to touch raw speed, speed endurance, and LT once a week each. This could be as simple as one plyo/hill sprint session, 6-8 100-200m reps after an easy run, and tempo work whether it be CV 400s (magic workout IMO. Not mentally taxing at all but gives you nearly the same gains as a tempo run) a 3-5 mile tempo run, or 3-4 mile reps at 5k pace with plenty of rest.

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Details on the CV 400s? How many reps and what is the rest? They sound interesting.

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Sorry, didn’t see this until now. What I do as a middle distance runner (so adjust accordingly) is 16x400m @ 5k-3k pace, so I’ll start at 1:15s and move down to 1:12s. I’ll usually do something like a 100m walk to the next starting point to switch it up a bit each rep. Typically you want about a minute of rest.

A 10k and up guy may want to do something more like 20-24 of them at 5k-10k pace.

I think the general idea is that you’ll get the same aerobic gains as a tempo run while building the mechanics to run faster.

My highschool senior year I cut out my tempo runs and replaced them with CV training for my footlocker training and PRd in my 5k by almost a minute, so I can personally testify it works great!

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Ah, I think I was reading this thread wrong. I thought this was all in the lens of base building before the season starts.

Like what everyone else is saying, at some point you are going to see greater gains by including workouts/races into your schedule. 12 weeks of "structured" workouts seems to be about right. What I was advocating earlier is ditching the structured stuff during base building in favor of picking up the pace on the day if you are feeling good ("run to the barn").

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i do r pace stuff wrote:
. What I was advocating earlier is ditching the structured stuff during base building in favor of picking up the pace on the day if you are feeling good ("run to the barn").

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Calm down, lol. I'm just giving my 2 cents. I agree, it's not 100% easy running.