The what behind "easy"

Communication is essential for a good coach/athlete relationship. If you don't provide feedback to your coach about the workout then you aren't being coached, you are simply following a training schedule. If you go to the trouble of hiring a coach to help improve your performance, the best thing you can do is update your coach on how the workouts are going. For this reason it is essential to keep a workout log, whether you do it online or handwritten in a journal, you should be keeping track of your data; this can be as simple as how you felt and increasingly more complex depending on what types of gadgets you use. I have athletes that don't use any data beyond a chrono watch and I have athletes that use gps watches, power meters and sleep monitors! As a science girl, I love interpreting data, the more you can give the more I can help you from an objective viewpoint. If you aren't much for keeping track of your metrics during workouts the one thing you can and should keep track of daily is how you felt. How you feel during a workout lines up proportionately to what the workout calls for. For this reason, I am going to discuss what exactly is an easy pace. I'd like to thank Susan for the idea for this post, as once of my loyal athletes Susan is phenomenal at providing me with data, updating her training log after each workout so that I get to see it and provide her with feedback as needed. Sometimes the best intel I get is outside of the workout log however, in this case I happened to be catching up on some of my favorite blogs now that the first semester is complete and I can read something outside of science education for a little while! Susan wrote on "Finally following orders" and it's a really good blog about struggling with running easy when you are supposed to. I've written on pacing yourself before but it will be good to revisit easy running. Working with athletes for almost 15 years now and more recently at the Runner's Lab, one of the most common training mistakes I see runners make is running the same pace all the time, all year round. There is a time for maintaining pace, particularly in the easy zones at the beginning of a training plan. It allows you time to build your aerobic base and increase mileage. We all want to be faster, when focusing on improving your run speed it's a mistake to increase mileage while increasing speed, there is just not enough time for the body to adapt to the physical demands of both. Since the 2012 training season is just about to begin, focus on building your mileage for running first. Keep the runs easy, don't tack on more than a half to one mile to weekday workouts and more than 2 miles on your long run and you will stay within a manageable increase without overtraining. So, what's easy?
Easy running is a pace that you can maintain comfortably for a very long period of time. Your breathing rate, while increased from resting, should be free flowing and "easy", the effort should be completely comfortable, you should be able to hold a conversation if you are running with a group and you should simply feel good, like you could run for 2 hours at that pace if needed. At this time of the year, I often encourage the athletes I train to not wear a pace watch or gps tracking device while out running easy. With just yourself and a simple chrono watch, you can really tune into your body and run what feels easy on that day. "Easy" efforts change! If you had a great night's sleep, you are stress free, the environmental conditions are right than sometimes "easy" is faster. If you had a poor night's sleep, a particularly stressful day, the environmental conditions are hot and humid or extremely cold or windy; then "easy" can be a slower pace and that's fine! Body awareness of pacing is a skill that has to be developed. If you are a slave to the pace watch and find yourself running faster or slower than that set pace and you respond by increasing or decreasing your effort based on what the watch readout says then you are not listening to your body. For the next few weeks, go out for a run without the watch and just simply pay attention to how you are feeling, adjust your pace to an "easy" level by monitoring your body, not the watch. If your watch is such a crutch for you that you can't leave it home than change the data screens to reflect time, take the pace data and the alarms off. Allowing your body to run an easy aerobic pace is very beneficial to improving your overall fitness base and to allow you to tune in to your body, increasing awareness. 5-10 weeks of easy, consistent running can do so much to prepare you for the next phase of training in which you build speed towards a goal race as you maintain that carefully built weekly mileage. Base your easy pace on a recent race time. For example, if you recently ran a 5k and averaged 9:20 pace than your easy runs should be anywhere from one to two minutes per mile slower than this. If you held a 9:20 pace for a 5k and find yourself running 9:40's for an "easy" run, you are running way too close to your threshold pace and that "gray" zone can spell disaster in the form of injury if all your running is at that pace. You have my permission to slow down! You won't lose any fitness I promise, and if anything, you will gain fitness by running at an appropriate pace for your fitness level so that when the time comes to begin speed training, your body can handle the extra demand of the intensity you place on it. Now what are you waiting for? Head out for an enjoyable easy paced run!

My most recent easy run, on soft trails, easy on the body too!