What are easy runs for?

All running is stress that the body responds to.

You can't run a hard workout every day.

For most people the optimal training is to break down the week into 2 workouts, 1 long run, and the fill the rest with easy runs as much as you can handle without breaking down. The more you do something the better you will be at it. That's about it.

nothing to see here wrote:

All running is stress that the body responds to.

You can't run a hard workout every day.

For most people the optimal training is to break down the week into 2 workouts, 1 long run, and the fill the rest with easy runs as much as you can handle without breaking down. The more you do something the better you will be at it. That's about it.

Don't listen to this guy he is wrong.

Because grammer is more good wrote:

nothing to see here wrote:

All running is stress that the body responds to.

You can't run a hard workout every day.

For most people the optimal training is to break down the week into 2 workouts, 1 long run, and the fill the rest with easy runs as much as you can handle without breaking down. The more you do something the better you will be at it. That's about it.

Don't listen to this guy he is wrong.

no he is totally right

wellasforme wrote:

Because grammer is more good wrote:

Don't listen to this guy he is wrong.

no he is totally right

Ahobbyjoggersayswhat?

Because grammer is more good wrote:

wellasforme wrote:

no he is totally right

Ahobbyjoggersayswhat?

What? Lol, why is he wrong "mr. im not a hobby jogger"

fatassinyogapants wrote:

I hear lots of people saying easy runs don't improve fitness and/or are just for recovery. Does that mean doing 3 or 4 workouts a week and just having rest days in between would be equivalent to having 3-4 easy days and 2-3 workouts a week? Also, why do most elite distance runners run the majority of their mileage easy?

They have a whole host of aerobic benefits, such as increase of mitochondria, increased capillary density, increased mitochondrial enzyme activity, etc.

It takes anywhere from 5-10+ days to recover from a work-out, so if you do them too frequently, you'll either burn yourself out or you won't be able to do the work-out as fast. In either case, you aren't improving fitness.

It's counter-intuitive that a whole bunch of easy running makes you faster when you are going so slow, but any work-out's effect is a quality of intensity and time. A speed work-out is fairly low volume, but very intense, so it's a powerful stimulus. Easy runs are low intensity, but an elite runner may run 100mpw easy, so that's still a very powerful stimulus for adaptations for them.

thanks for all the replies so far guys, although piano man's and the first one might have helped a bit more haha

fatassinyogapants wrote:

I hear lots of people saying easy runs don't improve fitness and/or are just for recovery.

People that say that are wrong. The simple fact is that elites do what works, that is why they are elite. If somebody comes along and tries something new that works better, very quickly all the elites drop what they are doing and start doing whatever is shown to be better, training is very Darwinian.

80/20 training is what most elites do across all endurance sports, if it didn't work they wouldn't do it. Don't worry so much about why, people will argue until they are purple about why, just worry about the how.

Thanks a lot man, I've found that easy running alone has helped a lot in becoming faster. When I first started I could run about a 7:00 mile; after 2 months of just easy running at no more than 12 mpw I got a 6:05, granted these are noobie gains.

I'm curious however, if say someone had 3:59 talent in the mile or sub 14 minute 5k talent, how far he could get to his/her potential by just doing high easy mileage and maybe strides for speedwork? I know that's a dumb question because obviously threshold running, interval work and other training stimuli are needed to be able to reach that sort of fitness if one is capable of it, but it interests me nonetheless.

wellasforme wrote:

Because grammer is more good wrote:

Don't listen to this guy he is wrong.

no he is totally right

+1

To clarify, by "easy runs" he doesn't mean 3-4 miles at 8 minute pace: it's just like base training. "Easy" means "conversational pace" and the distance usually isn't short.

There have been quite a few sub 4 milers that are lazy and talented.

Recovery

You might like reading this Mr. OP.

http://www.coacheseducation.com/xc/jack_farrell_july_00.php

Easy-paced runs are for long-term development, hard-paced runs are for short-term, especially when run to near exhaustion. The former are like a conservative investment, the latter like a credit card.

They're for wusses that can't hack intensity and lack guts

Meaty Balls wrote:

Easy-paced runs are for long-term development, hard-paced runs are for short-term, especially when run to near exhaustion. The former are like a conservative investment, the latter like a credit card.

good analogy. +1.

Easy runs are for an hour.

I define an easy run as a run at a pace fast enough to provide an aerobic benefit but slower than the pace of your anaerobic threshold, typically at a speed 65%-70% of vVO2max. A quick calculation would 50% slower than what you can run your current date pace 400m.

The purpose of the run is to help in recovery from harder effort days by "massaging" waste from the muscle tissue damaged on quality days as well as long term development with structurally changing the body (bigger lungs, bigger heart, more capillaries, larger blood vessels, more mitochondria, etc.) if there is a sufficent volume of this effort of work being done.