Training: Easy Run Pacing

Train Better Through the Fine Art of Pacing

To achieve your goals as a runner, knowing your correct training paces is essential. In any well-designed running program easy running make up the biggest percentage of an athlete's overall training. Proper pacing is one of those skills. An overzealous pace can be maintained for a few weeks before burnout or injury are a certainty. But to achieve an appropriately ambitious goal long term planning is required.

For the novice runner easy running serves as the foundation to which adaptation to more strenuous training can occur. To the experienced runner easy running more often than not are active recovery day in which the athlete attempts to recover from the muscle damage caused by the previous day's training.

Proper pacing really is a problem in two parts: knowing the appropriate pace, and actually running it! Knowing your proper pace is about understanding your fitness and factoring in the environmental conditions. The ability to run that proper pace, however, is a learned skilled. As highly motivated endurance athletes we often are programmed to believe that more is better. This is not the case especially when it comes to easy run pacing. Many of the world's top Japanese and Kenyan distance runners are renowned for performing the bulk of their training at paces as slow as 10:00 minute mile pace.

The difficulty comes when athletes all too often rely on the feedback from running gadgets and mile markers. Such feedback can often be misinterpreted, slowing down and speeding up based on total time, which may have little to do with our level of effort at that very moment. A group mentality often leads to improper pacing. All too often pace groups push ill-prepared athletes too hard too fast. Remember you're an individual with unique training requirements! It's important to create a relaxed training environment for yourself, even if this means slowing down.

The solution, then, is to base your pace on something other than the watch. The only other alternative is the sensations coming from your own body. This may seem like a step down in accuracy, but the experience of the world's best endurance athletes suggest our bodies learn target paces, and ultimately provide the athlete with much more information about our effort levels than we may realize.

So the next time you head out the door for an easy run try these pacing strategies:

  • Rather than concentrating on pace, focus on proper running form. Throughout the run remind yourself to maintain optimal relaxation.
  • To prevent yourself from running too quickly, run an out and back route. If you're unable to cover the same amount of distance as on the way back you're running too quickly.
  • The talk test. If you're unable to maintain a conversation while running, you're running too fast.
  • Breathing rhythms. During an easy run your breathing rhythm should be no quicker than a 2-2 rhythm. That is, breathe in for two steps and then breathe out for two steps.