Easy Runs

How to get faster and recover from high loading by going slow

A high volume of easy running is the bread and butter of any distance runners training plan. Recovery runs need to be emphasised as much as everything else and athletes are not paying enough attention to this little detail.
Each session should have a specific purpose, including your easy runs. Could you be hitting those quality sessions even better by going 30-60 seconds slower per mile when going easy. The potential gains here are huge, even beyond the obvious that the easier load on the body means you’re more likely to keep consistently training over weeks, months and years with a healthy body.
Too high a percentage of speed work in your training week will only lead to short term gains.
The simple physiological equation employed by most coaches is as follows:

**Training plus recovery equals adaptation**

**Stress-recover-adapt**

Easy running provides fundamental adaptations but receive very little respect. They provide a stimulus to improve your aerobic fitness
In any proper training plan, easy pace will make up a large majority of your running and most tend to run too fast on easy days. What’s incredible about this training type are the huge physiological benefits that occur as a function of time spent running, not speed.

In scientific terms, easy runs teach our bodies how to utilise fats better as a fuel source, they increase Mitochondria aerobic enzymes, capillary density and myoglobin, all of which have a positive impact on your running.
Runners should achieve a training effect every day, recovery is a training effect, maybe the most important one.
It is during recovery that adaptations from the hard training take place. If a runner doesn’t recover, the body is not going to adapt, and you’ll either continue digging a hole for yourself or get injured.
The individual need of each athlete for both training and recovery needs to be recognised.
Recovery is not just the absence of activity, it can also mean an enhancement of activity, or a change of activity, such as swimming instead of running.

Slow, easy running helps to flush oxygen-rich blood through the legs and also heals micro-tears and other damage that a workout creates.
Mitochondria, capillaries and blood flow to muscles are increased so they are better able to utilize oxygen.
They allow for recovery from the hard days. Easy days allow your body to rebuild and reset after a hard workout and before the next big workout

Keep your easy days very easy, better to go a bit too slow than too fast.

Recovery is recovery!.

The problem is that we prefer to focus on what we do best–training! Focussing on recovery can be difficult.
Many fail to run easy on their easy days and then they don’t have the energy to run fast on their really important training sessions. They go out there we bring this competitive mindset to it, push a little harder, thinking that if they work harder, then they will produce better results. What does happen though when we push harder? We increase the amount of hormones we produce, also put other stresses on our body but we don’t gain any more benefits. Those things will happen at a slower pace, and so when we are doing that level of conditioning work, we really want to go as slowly as we possibly can and as comfortably as we possibly can so that we can come back tomorrow and the day after and develop consistency without what we call adrenalisation or hormonal influences that cause us to be stressed and them can lead to breakdown not only in the muscle tissue in the form of injury or in joints, tendons and ligaments but also in terms of illness.

Easy pace running refers to warm-ups, cool-downs, recovery runs, recovery running within a workout and generally long runs.
When it comes to recovery, it takes more confidence to run slowly than it does to run fast”.
Generally in the range of 59-74% of VO2max or 65-79% of your maxHr. In general, it is running at a comfortable, conversational pace, which certainly may vary daily, depending on how you are feeling.

Running at your easy pace promotes physiological benefits that build a solid base from which higher-intensity training can be performed. The heart muscle is strengthened, muscles receive increased blood supplies and increase their ability to process oxygen delivered through the cardiovascular system.What happens physiologically when we train is we are looking for adaptations in the muscles themselves as well as adaptations in the lungs to deliver oxygen.
Our ability to store energy and then produce energy increases through training.

Only 15-20% of training should be high intensity quality sessions. All the rest is easy, being able to have a conversation, finishing a run feeling really comfortable.
In this way, we will gain much more fitness from a physiological standpoint and from a emotional standpoint🏃‍♂️😊