Are "Easy" Runs necessary for those who race less than Half Marathon Distance?

From 800 to 10k easy running is a must. The aerobic benefits of easy running is far greater than any sort of cross training could get you. Though the mile and 800 are largely anaerobic, 5000 and 10000 runners need the higher mileage and aerobic capacity that comes along with easy running.

When you are young, like 19 years old, you can recover quickly and no, easy runs may not "seem" as needed. However, the majority of long distance runners reach their potential peak around 27-30 years of age. and at those ages, yes, easy runners are necessary.

Recovery is essential and a vital part of the entire process of improvement.

When you listen to Kenyans or runners from Europe, they advocate easy days and even complete rest more than Americans do.

They also advocate rest days or down time in life much more than we Americans.

Everybody wants to know the SECRET, haha, train for running events by cutting out all of the running! Yeah and to get better at shooting freethrows we'll send the boys to the bowling alley for a few frames!

Google Crossfit Endurance. It works.

"you are what you repeatedly do - excellence therefore is not an act but a habit".

in addition to the aerobic benefit of easy running already mentioned, there is no better way to get better at running than to practice (drumroll...) RUNNING. after years and years of daily running and ingraining that muscle memory into your CNS, your stride will become increasingly efficient. practice makes perfect, and you don't get REALLY good at things you do every other day. thus easy daily running is a must.

i think there is some literature on how running performance over long periods of time is often do to increased efficiency, and not further adaptations in being able to handle lactate or transport O2 better. and the only way you become more efficient is to PRACTICE RUNNING (both slow speeds and strides/reps/intervals at race pace).

In my opinion, easy runs are never necessary for anyone.

Fat Boy wrote:

In my opinion, easy runs are never necessary for anyone.

This guy is correct... unless you are person that is training for any running event.

Why don't you try running 140 to 150 miles a week, and

find out for yourself?

we talking bout practice? wrote:

"you are what you repeatedly do - excellence therefore is not an act but a habit".

in addition to the aerobic benefit of easy running already mentioned, there is no better way to get better at running than to practice (drumroll...) RUNNING. after years and years of daily running and ingraining that muscle memory into your CNS, your stride will become increasingly efficient. practice makes perfect, and you don't get REALLY good at things you do every other day. thus easy daily running is a must.

i think there is some literature on how running performance over long periods of time is often do to increased efficiency, and not further adaptations in being able to handle lactate or transport O2 better. and the only way you become more efficient is to PRACTICE RUNNING (both slow speeds and strides/reps/intervals at race pace).

But DOES running slowly make you more efficient at running fast paces, or only at slower paces? That is my question. If the latter is true, I feel like it is potentially detrimental to the entire body of training. Like, for instance, wouldn't it be better to do more quality training with cross training for aerobic maintenance than lesser quality and more easy aerobic running? And I'm absolutely not in any way saying you can do X-Fit type crap and be an elite runner. My thought is that perhaps 5 quality days and two days on the bike or in the pool may be a better prospect than 3 quality days and four days just barely moseying along the path.

yes

mid-d-x-train-guy_the_real_1 wrote:

But DOES running slowly make you more efficient at running fast paces, or only at slower paces? That is my question. If the latter is true, I feel like it is potentially detrimental to the entire body of training. Like, for instance, wouldn't it be better to do more quality training with cross training for aerobic maintenance than lesser quality and more easy aerobic running? And I'm absolutely not in any way saying you can do X-Fit type crap and be an elite runner. My thought is that perhaps 5 quality days and two days on the bike or in the pool may be a better prospect than 3 quality days and four days just barely moseying along the path.

There are several different reasons for running more slowly (and remember that when El Guerrouj ran 10 miles at 5:00 pace, it was still an aerobic run).

First of all, you need to recover from a hard session. You can't go hard every day or you get overtrained quickly. If you need to rest, you can either not run that day or run slowly. The idea behind recovery runs is that if you go slowly enough, you can rest and still get more training stimulus than if you did nothing. So you run slowly because you can.

But there's another reason. Google Dudley and Holoszy. You use different muscle fibers and they respond to different stimulus. Research in the 1970's showed that high intensity stimulus gave a higher performance boost, but it did so by primarily stimulating your type IIa fibers, which don't have the enduarcne of type I. Type I respond best to training efforts around 70% MHR, and those are the fibers you need for longer efforts, and even in an 800, the second lap is highly aerobic.

Muscle fibers turn on more or less concurrently, but they are primarily recruited by force. If you train at a slower pace (70%), you will recruit primarily slow twitch, thus you are not training fast twitch fibers to become slower.

When I look at guys who have been truly phenomenal, their training never seems to have true "easy" days except for maybe the days leading up to peak races. It was either quality or (rarely) rest.

And I'm not talking about quality as compared to the 17 min 5ker, I'm talking about quality in relation to them. In El G and John Walker's training logs, when they were "just running" it was more often than not steady at close to 3:00/km. For Coe, "recovery" days might mean 10 miles steady state on the roads or a change of pace fartlek.

For instance: El G had a mile PR of 3:43 and a 5k PR of 12:50. In the base/prep phase, every day, he was doing one if not two 9 0r 10 mile runs at 4:50 pace, more than 75% of PR mile pace, and weekly sessions of 6X1k in 2:30 w/ 2:00 rest(faster than 5k pace) and 4 x 2000m in 5:10 with 2 min recovery (slightly slower than 5k pace).

For a 4:30/15:30 guy, that would equate to "easy" everyday runs at 5:45 m/m.

He, like Coe and others, did additional extensive supplemental work with circuit training, plyometrics, weights, flexibility, etc. as well.

For El Guerroui as a 3:26/3:43 guy, running 10 miles at 5:00 would be the same as a 4:30 guy doing them at 6:00. You also have to consider that their lactate clearance abilities are much more developed.

Define "necessary" :)

If you want to race at your very very very very best, and you want to know if there is absolutely 0 downside to dropping all easy running, then I doubt you will get many takers, for any number of reasons (e.g. people here seem to reflexively berate anyone trying to run less or more slowly).

But if you are just wondering if you can run *almost* as well, say 99ish% (@10s seconds over a 20 min 5K), then I am guessing you'll get different answers.

Since you are looking at El G's training logs etc, it sound as though you might be interested in the former, though I think the latter isn't a bad question either.

I've seen other training logs with substantially slower easy days. You're not going to see a 12:50 guy running many miles at 7:00 minute pace, but I think you will see days at like 6:00-5:30, e.g. Lagat.

Easy run usefulness is subject to confirmation bias because:

1) it's traditional.

2) it's cheaper than other recovery exercises.

3) distance runners like easy jogs.

Xfit_guy_the_real_1 wrote:

Google Crossfit Endurance. It works.

No, it doesn't.

crossfir dnf wrote:

Xfit_guy_the_real_1 wrote:

Google Crossfit Endurance. It works.

No, it doesn't.

You know that wasn't the real Xfit guy, right?

mid-d-x-train-guy_the_real_1 wrote:

LSD ... NCBI... XT ... VO2 ... ARM ... CNS ?

What's all this mumbo jumbo?