Easy does it
Slow and steady is the sustainable path to success as a runner
I had a number of false starts as a runner, mostly because I had no idea what sort of pace I should be running at, let alone how to target different paces and heart rate zones.
Like many new to the sport, I made running a lot harder than it needed to be because I tended to always push myself at a pace that was too hard for my fitness level. Exhaustion or a stitch would set in quickly, and I’d abandon the run after 20 or 30 minutes. Does this sound familiar to you?
When we start running, unless we’ve been doing something comparable in terms of effort, there is a lot of work to do to establish an aerobic base.
Without going into all the science here, essentially an aerobic base is the foundation of endurance fitness. It’s what allows you to keep exercising for any sustained period. As a distance runner, you are overwhelmingly using your aerobic energy system (as opposed to the anaerobic or ATP systems which we rely more on for shorter and more intense activities).
Aerobic fitness needs to be built gradually and is best done primarily through sustained periods of effort (at least 30-40 minutes) at moderate intensity. Heart rate should be significantly elevated, but not to the point where you feel out of breath. A rule of thumb is that you should be able to carry on a fairly normal conversation with a person running next to you.
In fitness discussion, the shorthand often used to label this effort level is Zone 2. There’s a bit of obsession in some circles about the benefits of Zone 2 exercise. With good reason - the science backs it up.
Cumulatively, lots of running in Zone 2, at a comparatively easy pace, will build your fitness significantly and your capacity to run faster for longer.
This can seem counterintuitive at first. If runners are training for a race, they are often targeting a particular goal or PB. For example, let’s imagine a runner named Jenny. She wants to run a half-marathon in 90 minutes, meaning her average speed would need to be about 4 mins, 15 minutes secs per km. Without an understanding of training principles, it’s understandable Jenny thinks she needs to do a lot of training at that speed.
lots of running at a comparatively easy pace will build your fitness significantly and your capacity to run faster for longer
But 4:15 minutes per km is very close to Jenny’s maximum attainable speed over that distance for her current fitness. Once she starts running at that speed, her heart rate will rise rapidly and after a while it will take everything she’s got to sustain that effort. And so running at that pace for sustained periods of even 15 or 20 minutes during training will be quite taxing.
We should spend at least 80% of our time training at easy paces
As such, during her training she will only spend a small percentage of her training time at that pace. The vast majority of her training should be at a much easier effort level.
This is known as the 80/20 rule and essentially means that we spend at least 80% of our time training at easy paces, saving our harder efforts for only about one fifth of the time we spend running.
There are a couple of reasons for this.
The first is that spending too much time at these harder efforts is too fatiguing and will likely be counterproductive, leading to exhaustion and possible injury. Longer recovery times are required after harder runs and so you may even end up running less overall.
Secondly, all that time at “easy” pace is building your aerobic system in a manner akin to expanding the size of both your fuel tank AND your engine. Over time, it will increase your baseline aerobic fitness, such that running at your typical easy pace will feel easier over time - and so too will running at harder paces, because the greater aerobic capacity you have built makes the task that much easier.
An experienced coach and fast runner I spoke with a while back said he only prescribes two really hard workouts for his runners a month. Most of the focus is on mileage and consistent training.
To be clear, we don’t neglect the quicker paces. In Jenny’s case, she can incorporate both elements in one run. For example, to prepare for her half-marathon, she might run for 60 minutes total in a pattern like this:
10 minutes warm up at very easy pace
10 minutes easy pace
10 minutes at race pace
5 minutes easy pace
10 minutes at race pace
15 minutes warm down at easy pace
She will get the benefit of a total of 20 minutes at her goal pace, with some recovery time in between. As she progresses in her training towards the race, she will likely need to increase the amount of time she spends at her goal pace. But it’s unlikely she would do more than about 40 minutes at that goal pace, because it’s too taxing - she needs to save herself and go all out on race day, knowing she will be quite sapped for a week or two afterward.
From a personal perspective, I can attest to the benefits of this approach. I recently completed a marathon in my goal time of just under 3 hours. During training, the longest stint I spent training at race pace during a run was 10km.
I wondered how I would sustain that pace for another 32km on the day. The truth was, all the easy running I’d been doing in the months leading up had prepared me for the big day. To empty the tank.
So what’s the takeaway? It’s more than OK to spend most of your time running at easy paces. In fact, it’s the most effective way to build long-term success.
To find out about how Inner Best Running can design a training program that works for you, get in touch via the link below.
