Just slow it down love

When I first started running, I didn’t have an “easy” pace.

For the first few months, most of my running consisted of rinsing the same 5K route and trying to make it faster every single time. If I ran slower than I had the week before, I probably would have seen that as a bad run.

At the time, getting better at running seemed pretty straightforward: if I wanted to run faster, surely I needed to practise running faster? It wasn’t until I started following properly structured training that I realised there was a lot more to it than that.

Even then, easy running took me a while to get my head around. I’m naturally quite competitive with myself, so there was always that temptation to look at my watch and think, surely I can keep this under X pace. Strava definitely doesn’t help either it’s very easy to label something an “easy run” while still wanting the average pace to look good when you upload it.

Now, I genuinely don’t stress about pace on my easy runs.

And ironically, learning to slow them down has been a pretty important part of becoming a faster runner.

What is the point of an easy run?

The main job of an easy run is to build your aerobic base, basically your ability to sustain running for longer, recover well and handle more training without creating loads of unnecessary fatigue

When I’m looking at an easy run, I’m not interested in forcing a specific pace just because it looks good on paper. The goal is to keep the effort low enough that you’re building fitness, adding useful mileage, and still recovering properly for the sessions where pace actually matters.

Over time, consistent easier running helps your body become better at using oxygen and producing energy. As part of your overall training, it can also contribute to better running economy, which simply means becoming more efficient so the same pace requires less effort.

One easy run isn’t going to suddenly transform your fitness. It’s the accumulation of them over weeks and months that matters.

The easy work builds the base that allows the hard work to actually be good.

How easy should an easy run actually feel?

This is where I think we’ve managed to make something pretty simple unnecessarily complicated.

You can judge an easy run through a combination of effort, heart rate and the talk test.

For me, effort is the most important. You should feel relaxed and controlled, and be able to comfortably hold a conversation in full sentences. If you prefer using RPE (your rating of perceived exertion) somewhere around 2-4 out of 10 is a useful guide.

You should finish feeling like you could have carried on rather than spending the final ten minutes staring at your watch waiting for it to hit the distance.

And your easy pace won’t necessarily be the same every day.

If I’ve trained legs the day before, I’m tired, it’s boiling outside or I’m running a hilly route, my pace might be noticeably slower. That really doesn’t matter.

The pace is an outcome of the effort, not the target of the session.

Do all easy runs need to be in Zone 2?

Zone 2 seems to be absolutely everywhere in running at the moment.

Zone 2 is basically a lower heart rate zone, usually around 60–70% of your max heart rate. Most watches will work this out for you, but, you can get a rough idea by multiplying your max heart rate by 0.6 and 0.7 for a decent estimate, just remember it is still only an estimate, so don’t get too hung up on a couple of beats either way!!!!

Heart rate can definitely be useful. I look at mine during my own training and it gives me another bit of information alongside how I actually feel. I’ve had plenty of easy runs where my heart rate sits nicely in the 130s, and everything feels effortless, but I also have easy runs where my HR can be more like 150, its really day-dependent.

But I think we’ve also developed a bit of a hyper-fixation around staying perfectly within one heart-rate zone for every second of a run.

Heart rate isn’t going to behave exactly the same every day. Heat, hills, fatigue, stress, hydration, caffeine and sleep can all affect it, and the zones your watch has calculated might not be perfectly accurate for you either.

So if my heart rate creeps up slightly while I’m running uphill, I’m not stopping halfway up because my watch has decided I’ve entered Zone 3.

That doesn’t mean the run has suddenly stopped being useful.

Equally, “heart rate doesn’t matter” isn’t an excuse to absolutely send your easy runs. There’s a big difference between not obsessing over a perfect number and running noticeably harder than the session is supposed to be.

That’s why I prefer using heart rate alongside the talk test and how the run actually feels rather than letting one number on my watch completely dictate the session.

The Strava problem

The opposite problem is obsessing over pace. And this is one I’ve definitely been guilty of.

You set off for an easy run, look at your watch and see a pace that feels a little slow. So you pick it up. Then your average gets close to a nice round number and you think, I might as well keep it under that now.

Before you know it, the easy run has quietly become a steady run. And for what? A slightly nicer number on Strava?

Some of my easy runs now are much slower than the paces I would previously have allowed myself to run at. That doesn’t mean I’m getting less fit. I’m just much more confident in letting an easy run serve its actual purpose.

Not every run needs to demonstrate your fitness.

Why this matters more as you run more

You might get away with running everything a little too hard when you’re only running a couple of times per week.

As your training volume increases, that becomes much harder to sustain.

If you’re trying to fit easy mileage around intervals, tempo work, long runs and strength training, you can’t afford for every “easy” run to create loads of additional fatigue.

There needs to be some contrast within the week.

If every run ends up somewhere in the middle, not properly easy, but not hard enough to be a quality session either , you can end up feeling tired all the time without actually getting the best out of your harder training.

I’d much rather see a client run slower than expected on an easy day and then turn up fresh enough to properly hit the session where pace actually matters.

Easy doesn’t always mean effortless

Easy running also isn’t necessarily going to feel amazing every time.

Some days your legs feel heavy from the first kilometre. You might be tired, carrying fatigue from training or simply having one of those days where running feels harder than usual.

That doesn’t automatically mean you need to push the pace or skip the run altogether.

Quite often, it’s even more reason to respect the easy effort. Let the pace come down, get moving and see how you feel.

There’s obviously a difference between feeling a bit sluggish and something genuinely feeling wrong, but you don’t need every run to feel fantastic for it to still be useful.

Plodders Running Club <3

Easy runs don’t need to feel like another serious training session.

They’re probably one of the best opportunities in the week to take the pressure off a bit, run with friends, join a run club or just enjoy being out without constantly checking the watch.

If you can comfortably chat while you’re running, that’s usually a pretty good sign you’re keeping the effort where it should be anyway.

And I think that’s worth remembering, because not every run needs to be about chasing a pace, hitting a session or proving your fitness.

Sometimes the easy run is just there to build the miles, get the aerobic work in and actually enjoy running!!