Why can I run 7:45 pace on easy days and still run my race times?

Dude you're way too focused on being amazed with getting by on the bare minimum. The question you should be asking yourself is "Why haven't I gone sub 24:30 and sub 14:30?" That mindset will take you much, much further my friend. Don't focus on what you can do with the least effort, focus on where your true potential is and push the limits of what you think you're capable of.

^^^^^^ I second the above. Stop comparing yourself with other people good or bad. Being proud for being just as good as someone else on "less" does not prove anything. The only question is how you compare to your own PR's.

Sub 15 and sub 2530

Easy days between 8-9 min miles average. Meaning sometimes slower

Workouts are much faster. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday , Long sunday

When I take some workouts out of the week everything quickens up

70-85/week

16 min 5k is 5:09/mi. Easy days at 7:40 are more than 2:30 slower per mile than 5k pace. That places those runs not in easy run pace but recovery run territory. Recovery runs are too slow to help boost aerobic fitness at all. Their purpose is solely for recovery.

Easy runs though can increase aerobic fitness if they are run faster. In terms of HR, recovery runs may be 120 bpm or slower, hardly more than a fast walk, not enough to increase fitness. Easy runs at 150 HR do provide enough stress to increase fitness.

Just know if you are running your easy runs at 7:40 they are not easy runs but recovery runs and you are sacrificing aerobic fitness so you can recover enough between workouts. Worked for RoJo and Mo Farah prior to moving to Salazar, and it seems to be working for you.

What remains to be seen is if you can run your easy runs at true easy run pace like Farah does under Salazar and still recover for workouts. What would make you faster, 3 workouts per week with recovery runs on easy days or two workouts per week with easy runs on easy days?

May depend where you are in your training cycle. The closer you are to your goal race the more important the workouts become so 3 per week may be better. During off season, aerobic fitness should be the goal so 2 workouts per week may suffice.

One more thing I will repeat, if you are running doubles, your morning run after a hard workout can be at recovery pace. By afternoon, you should be recovered enough to run at easy pace. This is the magic of shakeout recovery runs and doubling. They allow faster recovery so you can run a workout every other day instead of needing an extra day to recover.

Also, because you are running more sessions per week, runs don't have to be so long to get in the same mileage. This way you can minimize the recovery running while maximizing the easy running thereby getting the full benefit from both and still recover in time for the next hard workout.

I ran 45-50 miles a week, once a day with intervals 3-5 times a week. I took one day off a week and walked 30-60 minutes that day. Occasionally I took 2 days off a week but usually walked. Ran personal bests for most events. The Improvement came over the matter of several years. I think the secret was consistency and having others to run intervals with. It was fun!

7:45 3k pace for your easy runs??? People, OPEN YOUR EYES. He's lying. Nobody can do that. He would be the GOAT.

I'm about 7 weeks into this training cycle (goal marathon on March 1st), but I've made a point to go easier than I have in the past on some of my easy days, usually going slower than 8:00 pace twice a week for a 10-ish mile run (goal marathon pace will probably be around 6:05 to 6:10). As I've been getting into workouts, I've been noticing them going substantially better than they have in previous seasons, at least so far. I was a little more fit starting this season than I have been in the past at the beginning of other seasons, but I think that truly allowing adequate recovery and being properly rested has been the biggest factor in running much better in workouts. I won't race anything of much seriousness until the goal race, in the interest of staying extremely consistent in training, so we won't see the results for a little over 2 months still, but I have a really good feeling about what I've been doing.

2namez wrote:

I'm a sub-26:30 8K and sub-16:00 5K guy. I generally run 70-75 miles a week. I run my workouts hard, yet on days in between I usually average in the 7:40s for most of my runs. As far as I can tell, among guys who run similar race times, I run the slowest training pace of all of them. Most are around 7:00 or under on any given day. It just feels comfortable for me to run that pace on those days. Why might this be, and why can I still produce my kind of race times?

i think its pretty obvious. you're just a lot more talented than them. most runners need to run much faster paces to run those kind of elite times, but you are simply of a higher genetic level of athletic excellent. it is also likely that you were endowed with far larger genetalia.

if this isn't a troll post, wake up pal. i ran 15:40s for XC 5k in high school off about 35 miles per week. i have a buddy who just ran 25:20 for 8k XC off about 50 a week at 8 minute easy pace miles. get over yourself.

I am a sub 15 5k guy and I do easy runs at slower than 7 min pace, not because I like jogging along but because my legs are cashed from workouts and long runs. I could run 6:20 pace on every run but my workouts and more importantly races would suffer. If you need to run 7:45s to recover, run 7:45s.

Yeah dude, you're really not anything special. I know guys that have run low 14s for 5k and regularly do 7:30+ pace.

depends on the goal wrote:

There are certain adaptations that occur from easy(ish) aerobic running. There is a range of paces/efforts where you achieve the same adaptations... no more no less.

For argument's sake, let's say your range is 7:00-8:30. If the "range" idea is true (I think it is), then it's hard to justify running at the faster end of the range. You get no additional training adaptations, but you increase your risk of injury and possibly reduce your recovery for other harder workouts. Plus, if you run slower, you can tend to run longer duration, which WILL produce additional training adaptations.

Here is one example of the concept:

http://www.letsrun.com/2006/collegesuck.php

Probably the key! or at least one of the main keys.

Good discussion.

I'm just getting back into reasonable mileage after time off from injury and I wanted to see where I was at so I ran a 18:01 5k time trial. If I take to heart what Salazar says then I should be running about 7:15 pace for my easy days based on this time trial. To me, right now, that seems pretty fast for easy running. Doable certainly, but tough to accomplish day in day out along with a couple of workouts and a long run. I think Salazar's point was that it IS tough - distance running should make you tired and you are often on the razor's edge if you want to see improvement. I can him trying to make this an "open your eyes, fool" statement but at the same time, 7:45 seems to be the natural pace I'm locking into right now for my easy runs.

What hasn't been brought up yet is how easy runs can (and perhaps should) be run as moderate progression runs. Maybe I start out the first mile at 8:15 pace and by the end I hit a few miles in the 7:15 range averaging out to around 7:45 pace but getting in a bit of the faster end of easy pace when the body is nicely warmed up.

I told my story elsewhere on here, but I got faster when I slowed down. My best times were better than the OP, but 95% of my runs were between 7:30 and 8 minute pace.

Bill Rodgers says in his original book Marathoning, that even at his best, he was doing a lot of mileage at around 6:30 pace. BR was close to 4:25/mile for a 5k This means that his runs were 50% slower than his 5k pace. Sounds like the OP has a best of 5:10 pace for 5k. Add 50% and what do you get? 7:45.

OP: Keep on doing exactly what you're doing.

I agree with everyone who's said that recovery pace is what feels easy. For most of us it doesn't matter if that's 7:15 or 7:45 (or whatever) in terms of getting the benefit of an easy run, and running at the faster end may in fact make your next workout less effective.

BUT somehow I still feel like there has got to be some benefit to running a bit quicker rather than slower. Maybe it's OCD.

What I do is run easy runs with a Garmin, not looking at it until about half way in. Then, if the average pace has been (eg) 7:34 for the first half, I'll make sure the second half is no slower than 7:25ish (this usually happens pretty naturally). This is not a quantum shift in effort, but I think the habit of speeding up rather than slowing down is important, even on easy days.

Link wrote:

I told my story elsewhere on here, but I got faster when I slowed down. My best times were better than the OP, but 95% of my runs were between 7:30 and 8 minute pace.

Bill Rodgers says in his original book Marathoning, that even at his best, he was doing a lot of mileage at around 6:30 pace. BR was close to 4:25/mile for a 5k This means that his runs were 50% slower than his 5k pace. Sounds like the OP has a best of 5:10 pace for 5k. Add 50% and what do you get? 7:45.

OP: Keep on doing exactly what you're doing.

By this calculation I should be doing around 8:30 pace on my easy runs based on recent 5k time trial of 18:00. At what point does this kind of calculation get ridiculous? I don' t mean this as a snide remark - is there a point of slowness where it's paradoxically a disadvantage to be going that slow on an easy day? 8:30 pace feels ok as a warmup/stumbling out of bed mile for an easy run but to do the whole thing at that pace... Certainly I could be getting in lots of mileage on easy runs at that pace. Perhaps that's the point?

To bring another calculation into this, the Hanson's marathon method suggests easy runs of marathon pace plus 1-2 min. For a 3:03:xx marathoner (me a few years ago, for instance) that would be around 8-9 minute pace for easy runs. Again, the idea of running 9:00 pace for an easy run is hard to fathom but perhaps this is another "open your eyes, fool" moment. I have a down week without workouts this week due to the holidays, perhaps I'll stick all the easy mileage strictly at 8:30 pace and see how that goes for a while.

love for you to re post in a couple months when you're going backwards...

A wise old runner once told me, "Most people run too hard on their easy days and too easy on their hard days."

One other anecdote I can think of comes from the old HADD (John Walsh) threads here on LRC. He was an advocate of heart rate monitor-based training. He said of all the athletes he coached, the one universal was that he always had to work hard to get them to run their easy days slower than they ever have in their life. Even without heart rate monitor training, I think that dovetails well into the previous examples given, i.e., easy runs at slower paces than many would think useful.

Finally, I have an old spreadsheet that calculates percentages of marathon pace that I'm sure I gleaned it somewhere off of the LRC boards, but moderate/easy running was described as 70-80% of marathon pace. For a 2:50 marathoner that works out to about 8:20 pace.