Rosario also points out that if you\u2019re regularly running as fast as you can for long distances, you\u2019re not actually coming close to your true top speed, since you won’t have the energy or the power. If he\u2019s working with an athlete and notices that all of their runs are at the same pace, he recognises an issue. ‘That’s probably more [like] their medium-effort pace. They’re probably not running as hard as they can every day,’ he says. Maxing out your body on every single outing takes a toll on your muscles, tendons, and ligaments, says Rosario. <\/p>\n
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‘Anecdotally, we definitely see that,’ says Brad Whitley, PT, DPT<\/a>, a physical therapist at Bespoke Treatments<\/a> in San Diego. ‘Generally, if people are including easy runs in their training, consistently, they tend to be a little less injured.’ The key here, Whitley notes, is recovery. ‘If you’re doing back-to-back hard days, you’re just not allowing the recovery mechanisms to occur efficiently. You’ll be stressing that system to a point where it’s not going to be able to have the same effect that it would have if you’re doing an easy run.’<\/p>\n This is also due to the impact running hard has on your body. When you run fast, you\u2019re creating more force on every stride than you do when running at a more leisurely pace. In doing so, you\u2019re amping the impact on the bones, tendons, and ligaments. ‘I try to stay away from the negative insinuation [that] you’ll get injured if you run faster,’ Whitley says. ‘But I’d say the more times that you run faster, and putting your joints under that load, cumulative stress will compound and you could increase your risk for injury.’ There\u2019s more to slow running than just preserving your body from injury, too. Along with giving you the chance to recover, Whitley notes that training this way allows for ‘adaptations that don’t occur with higher level speeds.’ In other words, your slow workouts are affecting your body in ways your fast ones won\u2019t. ‘You’re actually training a very specific system in your physiology to operate at a low heart rate,’ Whitley continues.<\/p>\n You might have heard the term \u201cZone 2 training<\/a>\u201d, and that\u2019s what Whitley is talking about. The exact numbers will be different for everyone, but Zone 2 generally refers to sustained exercise at 72 to 82 percent of your max heart rate. When you train in Zone 2, you build mitochondria (which you might remember from high school biology as the “powerhouse of the cell”). With more mitochondria, you\u2019ll be able to produce more energy and recover better. <\/p>\n But we’re not saying you should never run fast. In fact, scheduled sprint workouts are actually key to helping you amp the force you create on every stride (and they\u2019ll help your finishing kick on long runs, too). But not every single session can be at your peak output \u2013 especially when you\u2019re running multiple days per week.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t think slow, think easy<\/p>\n You might be reading this as a beginner runner who doesn\u2019t even know what counts as \u201cfast\u201d or \u201cslow.\u201d That\u2019s fine. In fact, that\u2019s an important aspect for your mindset in approaching these submaximal workouts. Rather than assigning a value that comes with \u201cfast\u201d or \u201cslow\u201d running tied to a finishing time or a pace, think about your overall \u201ceffort\u201d on each run.<\/p>\n Jes Woods<\/a>, a Nike Running coach, suggests dropping the term \u201cslow\u201d from your vocabulary. Instead, think of a submaximal session as an \u201ceasy\u201d run. ‘If you call my community run \u2018slow\u2019 \u2013 meanwhile it\u2019s one of my beginner runner\u2019s hardest runs of the week \u2013 I\u2019m going full mama bear,’ says Woods. ‘The whole point is to run at a low effort. So your \u2018slow pace\u2019 might feel \u2018easy\u2019 or low-effort one day, and you run that same \u2018slow pace\u2019 another day when you\u2019ve had no sleep and three beers the night before, it no longer feels easy.’<\/p>\n Woods admits that it can be hard to break the commonly-held mindset that workouts should feel hard. ‘I have all of these analogies and coach-isms because historically, it’s been difficult to convince runners to actually slow down and embrace the easy run days,’ she says. As for how to balance the easy runs with your desire to get better, our three experts agreed that easy workouts should actually make up the bulk of your training. Runners should aim to run 80 percent of their workouts slow (or easy), at or below their aerobic threshold. High-effort sessions (think sprint repeats or interval training) should compose the remaining 20 percent of their workouts. ‘This 80\/20 \u2018rule of thumb\u2019 was studied by Dr. Stephen Seiler<\/a> and made popular by Matt Fitzgerald’s book: 80\/20 Running<\/a>,’ says Woods. <\/p>\n How you structure this depends on how you think about your split. If you take on the week as a whole, you should have hard workouts two days at most. Then, you determine which days are easy and which are for rest. Narrow it down even more to five days, and you have one “hard” day and four easy workouts. For three training days, again, there’s only a single “hard” workout, with a medium-distance shakeout and a long run as your other two sessions (this is the structure I most often implement).<\/p>\n No matter how you do it, make sure that you prioritise recovery when you\u2019re creating your plan. ‘I never have two days in a row that are hard or fast,’ Rosario says. ‘There’s always got to at least be one, if not two, slow\/easy days in between.’<\/p>\n How to slow down <\/p>\n Both Rosario and Whitley mentioned using heart rate as a reliable gauge for effort (which ties back into those Zone 2 principles). ‘Regardless of what shoe you’re wearing, what terrain you’re on, what the weather is, what your stress level is that day, your heart rate is the output data point that you have to be able to assess whether you’re in an aerobic state,’ Whitley says. You\u2019ll need a heart rate monitor to do this, either on your fitness watch or a purpose-built device. Lab tests can determine exactly where that threshold is, but Whitley often uses a simplified version of the MAF 180 formula (a methodology developed by Dr. Phil Maffetone<\/a> in the 1980s to determine the ideal aerobic threshold for exercise) for rough estimates. This is easy: just subtract your age from 180. If you\u2019re 33 years old, 180 minus 33 is 147, so you make sure your effort doesn\u2019t push your heart rate above that number. <\/p>\n If biometrics aren\u2019t your bag, try the tried-and-true method most running coaches use to determine effort, the talk test. ‘I know this sounds old school and unscientific, but it really is true \u2013 if you can’t hold a conversation, then you’re not running slow,’ Rosario says.<\/p>\n This is also known as conversation pace by coaches. It introduces another element into the equation, too: the social nature of running. Conversation pace means you can talk to your friends while you\u2019re training, which makes these easy outings way more enjoyable. <\/p>\n Brett Williams, NASM-CPT, PES, a senior editor at Men’s Health, is a certified trainer and former pro football player and tech reporter. You can find his work elsewhere at Mashable, Thrillist, and other outlets.<\/p>\n \u00a0As Women\u2019s Health UK\u2019s fitness director and a qualified Pilates and yoga instructor, Bridie Wilkins has been passionately reporting on exercise, health and nutrition since the start of her decade-long career in journalism. She secured her first role at Look Magazine, where her obsession with fitness began and she launched the magazine\u2019s health and fitness column, Look Fit, before going on to become Health and Fitness writer at HELLO!. Since, she has written for Stylist, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Elle, The Metro, Runner\u2019s World and Red.Now, she oversees all fitness content across womenshealthmag.com.uk<\/a> and the print magazine, spearheading leading cross-platform franchises, such as \u2018Fit At Any Age\u2019, where we showcase the women proving that age is no barrier to exercise. She has also represented the brand on BBC Radio London, plus various podcasts and Substacks \u2013 all with the aim to encourage more women to exercise and show them how.Outside of work, find her trying the latest Pilates studio, testing her VO2 max for fun (TY, Oura), or posting workouts on Instagram. \u00a0<\/p>\n
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