unpopular opinion: run your easy days fast if you're slow twitch

If you're only running <45 miles per week, then sure, maybe, but that sounds like a great way to get injured and/or overtrained if you're doing high mileage

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I think there might be a place for more harder easy runs in highly developed runners. Once you sort of level out at your mileage peak, say 80-110 mpw, there isn’t much marginal benefit to grinding out MORE miles, especially outside of marathon training. So I’m wondering if in the case of highly developed & durable runners, it may make sense to make at least a couple runs a week at a faster easy pace, as long as it maintains recovery for hard workouts and can maintain overall volume without injury. A sort of training progression without increasing volume. I think you can still have “junk miles” in such a program, but I wonder if it’s worthwhile to reduce the number of these to only what is absolutely necessary.

1 minute slower than 5k is crazy. Should a 14:00 runner run "easy" at 5:30 pace? Should a 15:00 runner run "easy" at ~5:50 pace? Should a 16:00 runner run "easy" at ~6:10 pace?

I think pushing it if you feel good is fine occasionally, but by "pushing it" I mean running ~75% of 5k pace - so a 15:30 5k'er (5:00 pace per mile) would run at most 6:40 on an easy day if he's feeling great, not the 6:00 which you're suggesting

Yeah, to clarify my point, OP is a little crazy on the paces here, but what you’re suggesting is more in line with my point. 6:00 I’d burn out in like 3 days on 100 mpw as a 15:30 guy. But 6:40 might be sustainable.

OP is right about one thing...

That is an unpopular opinion.

I agree, this sounds absolutely crazy to me. However I do think there are some runners who are just built or wired differently and can handle it. I would suffer from complete physical and mental burnout if I did this, probably a lot of us would. Yet there are occasional examples of people who seem to be ok with running their easy days at a pace that most of us would consider "hammering."

1 min slower than 5k pace is commonly referred to as "steady state" for reference Alberto Salazar's "fast end of easy" he had Galen and Mo go was 90 sec off 5k pace.

All of the underperformers from my college days tended to run easy days too fast (I refused to run with them on easy days) and they consistently were unable to hit the times of the workout on hard days.

On race day they typically cratered. It was baffling. They raced slower than 14:45/32:00, I was sub 14:00/29:00, and I could not keep up with them on easy days without it wrecking the hard workout days.

Think of your friends on Strava. If your friend ran all his easy runs at 6:50/mile but only
had an 18:00 5K PR, you'd say he was dramatically underperforming. If your friend with a 20:00 5K PR ran 7:25 for 45 mpw, you'd say he was wasting his potential.

So, yeah, this sounds like a terrible idea.

Just want to agree with the posters saying 1 min off of 5k pace is way too fast. Even 2 min off is pretty aggressive for really fast, high mileage guys.

You need to put more effort into your "hard" days op. The reason you probably can't is because you're taking your easy days too fast.

Salazar made Mo run faster on his easy days. I think Mo was running close to 7min/mile before he started training under Salazar.

My theory is that 7:00-8:00 per mile is in the sweet spot of easy for the 14 minute to the 19 minute 5k tuner. slower 5k runners just can’t physiologically push into that next zone, they don’t have the reserve. moral of the story, a 5:10 miler/ 19 minute 5k guy won’t get much benefit from 9:30-10 pace

I am 800m guy and I can run easy pace around 60s per km slower than my 5k time. Granted, my 5000m PB is not that fast.

Mileage is around 40-60mpw.

To say it with the words of this forum: 0/10 :)

Exactly this. If you can run easy days "hard" it's because you run your "hard" days easy.

I’ve got a couple <14:00 and plenty of 14:30-15:00 guys on my team that’ll say “dude we need to slow it down” when we start going faster than 6:30 or so pace on mileage days.

I’d recommend looking at HR instead of pace for your easy runs. Assuming you’re 16-20 years old, sub 150 for easy days is ideal, and sub 160 is a must.

This is so stupid it's funny

This works for people who run every other day, but not daily. They run hard every run and never run "easy." But they still take easy days. Instead of running easy, between hard days, they just don't run at all on those days.

For people that run daily, or high mileage people, it doesn't work. You either get injured, or daily hard running stops as you bottom out with fatigue, which makes it physically impossible to run anything but easy pace, until you recover.