Training smarter for a marathon or half marathon does include LOTS of easy running in the base phase – it’s key to building endurance, increasing mitochondrial density, and ramping up mileage with minimal injury risk. But, even in the base phase, training smarter is not just about ‘running slow’. It also means balancing easy runs with regular strength training, strides and hill sprints, and a solid weekly long run. This all prepares us later in the build up to be able to add one or more workouts per week and to lengthen our long runs. Running easy runs easier is indeed a change many runners can benefit from (follow Boston and Chicago Marathon winner John Korir on Strava and see how easy his easy runs are!), but only running slowly won’t make you as fast as a healthy balance of easy runs, strides, long runs, strength training, and (one you’ve built an aerobic base) workouts.

• Pace is the last thing you should care about on an easy run. Ironically, it’s also the metric we tend to naturally monitor most.
  • Pace is a very rough proxy for effort, so it can only give us a rough idea of whether we’re running at the right effort to build endurance.
  • At the same level of effort, a run’s avg pace will be affected by shoes, terrain, hill grade, elevation, temperature, wind, distance/duration, fuel, fitness, and whether or not you do strides.
  • If you’re training effectively, the pace at which you can run easy will become faster as you get fitter.
• Heart Rate is used by many runners as a good proxy for effort and is especially helpful if you’re newer to goal-oriented training. For runners who may struggle to run easy runs easy enough, I recommend using the MAF 180 rule (180 minus your age = your target max heart rate on an easy run). While better than pace, heart rate is also an imperfect metric:
  • Not everyone has a heart rate monitor (HRM)
  • Wrist HRMs (eg your smartwatch) are the most common and are much less accurate than chest or arm straps
  • At a steady level of effort, a run’s avg heart rate is also affected by weather (esp heat and humidity), hills, elevation, run duration (it tends to go up over the course of a run, aka ‘cardiac drift’), illness, and again whether you do strides.
  • So your heart rate might stretch slightly out of Zone 2 on some easy runs, and that’s ok. And naturally it will during strides, that’s expected.
• Rate of Perceived Effort (RPE) – RPE is really the best way to ensure you’re running at the right effort, whether on easy runs or workouts, but it’s harder to really measure.
  • On an easy run, you should be able to have a conversation, breathe through your nose, and carry the pace for a long period of time. If it’s cool out, you likely won’t be sweating much.
  • The challenge is that many of us lack RPE calibration – we don’t know how different efforts feel or may not be in-tuned enough with how we feel because we’re distracted by music/podcasts, zoning out, or thinking about the day.
  • At the same heart rate, RPE might stretch higher than easy if we’ve got an injury (then rest!), a sickness (then rest!), or we’re just really fatigued (then rest!). In other words, you can use this simple rule: if your RPE doesn’t feel easy, you’re probably pushing it harder than you should on an easy run.