Taken from discussion between training theories Daniels, etc.
I was stating that my easy days were about 1:45-2:00 minutes slower than my mile PR at the time. I also stated that running slow makes slow runners.
Basically trained as a miler in college. Only ran 3:51 for 1500m. Always thought I had a couple more weeks of peak in me and felt I could have ran about 4-5 seconds faster. Didn't run a ton of miles, but kept it quality. Ran 4:12 mile as 34-yr old using same principle. You have to figure out what works for you and your body. This program worked for me. Remember these programs are only guidelines for you. As with the beginning of any season, I always felt tired and sluggish at first until my body adapted. My times still improved throughout the course of the training season and I was recovering enough where I was still running good workouts towards the end of the season and not feeling flat or stale. Even if you look back into the 70's to Computerized Running Training Programs by Purdy, I was running at about 70-75% effort. When I plug my time into the McMillan calculator, for easy runs it states 5:45-6:35. So I was tending to lean to the left a little more. Maybe we are disagreeing on the verbage of easy vice recovery with his calculator. It appears that recovery is lots slower than easy. Personally, we probably combined the meaning of the two and split the difference!
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http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=5291984#ixzz2wbdGl5tK