Putting the fun in easy runs

Slowing down doesn't have to be a bore.

I have a confession to make. It wasn’t until this past year when I started working with a coach that I learned how to go on an easy run. Years and years spent piling up mileage and race results and I never took the time to figure out how to make running easier. Weird, right? 

Or, maybe it isn’t so strange, after all. My hunch is that a lot of runners who think they’re running easy are actually pushing too hard. 

These runners, and again, I proudly counted myself among them for almost a decade, tend to have one speed. They run that speed each and every time they head out the door. And that’s where they typically stay, consistently average or even above average for a time, until that level becomes tougher to maintain with age. 

As we get older, injuries, burnout, and frustration seem to lurk around every corner. Improvements are miniscule and breakthroughs seem like a thing of the past. We try everything from new shoes to diets to upgrading our GPS watches because the old one clearly must be broken. 

Yet, we resist the one tool that is freely available to all of us: slowing down. The science on this is pretty clear. Do 80 percent of your running at an easy effort level, save the other 20 percent for high-intensity workouts, and your overall fitness and performance tends to improve.  

There are many reasons why runners fail to heed this advice. We can be a stubborn, prideful bunch, measuring our self worth with every mile split and every run logged into the database. 

There are practical considerations, as well. We barely have enough bandwidth to sneak in our runs around all the other things vying for our attention. Who has time to slow down when the kids have to be taken to school and we should have been at work 15 minutes ago? Fair points, all, but ultimately self-defeating. 

The other objection is that easy running is well, boring. It doesn’t have to be that way. Easy running can be illuminating and challenging in its own right. It can even be fun. It’s all in how you frame it.