Yes. It’s hard to run easy enough when you’re fit and not running 100+ miles a week, which is the level many high school and collegiate runners will find themselves in the summer months. You’re fit and you often feel good, so why not run a bit faster? Problem is the Kenyans don’t run this way on their recovery days and they’re pretty good; most elite runners training at altitude keep their easy days easy and some won’t even run a long run very fast for fear they’ll over-train.
Running easy on your easy days is a simple concept, yet many runners struggle with it.
Check out this podcast and forward to the 3:50 mark of the podcast where Brent Vaughn talks about running easy in college, when others did not. Also, and this may be the key to this podcast for young runners, at the 4:20 mark Brent points out that every workout day he’d go confirm with his coach, Mark Wetmore, the assigned pace for the day, making sure there was no miscommunication. Simple task, confirming with you coach what the plan is for the day, yet most athletes don’t do think they need to do that, assuming they clearly know what they’ve been assigned. I love that Brent did that his last couple of years at CU.
(Note: Brent doesn’t ask me that often what the assignment is because we’re so often trying to go off of feel. Plus, I’m writing this in June and I’m likely forgetting all of the runs in the fall and the winter when I did have help him figure out what I wanted. But often it was just putting a cap on the workout, placing a time/pace/rhythm past which we wouldn’t be running faster than (i.e. before the half marathon not much work was done faster than 4:40 pace, roughly 61:30 for 21.1k, because we thought that would be a very good performance and anything faster was just risking consistency for a somewhat unrealistic half marathon debut)
If you want to read a bit more on this check out this post on the NikeRunning.com site.
Take it easy.
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