Forums >General Running>Prescribed pace for easy days
Overweight per CDC BMI
I know everything I have read says to do easy run days at a conversational pace based off breathing. I tend to be very analytical with my paces for specific workouts and I won't pay much attention to the vague conversational pace. Unless I am sore after a race and running for recovery, I end up pushing myself more than I should on an easy day.
If my best 5k race pace was 7:19 and 10k at 7:40 per mile, what would you all recommend be my target pace for easy runs of 3-6 miles? I will follow a prescribed pace better than I will a "conversational breathing pace". Also, would you all do a slightly slower pace for a 5-7 mile easy run than a 3-4 mi easy run? I guess once you get to 8-10 miles it becomes a long run instead of an easy run.
Memphis / 38 male
5k - 20:39 / 10k - 43:48 / Half - 1:34:47 / Full - 3:38:10
https://runsmartproject.com/calculator/
SMART Approach
I know everything I have read says to do easy run days at a conversational pace based off breathing. I tend to be very analytical with my paces for specific workouts and I won't pay much attention to the vague conversational pace. Unless I am sore after a race and running for recovery, I end up pushing myself more than I should on an easy day. If my best 5k race pace was 7:19 and 10k at 7:40 per mile, what would you all recommend be my target pace for easy runs of 3-6 miles? I will follow a prescribed pace better than I will a "conversational breathing pace". Also, would you all do a slightly slower pace for a 5-7 mile easy run than a 3-4 mi easy run? I guess once you get to 8-10 miles it becomes a long run instead of an easy run.
A general guideline I use is 2:00 per mile slower than your current 5K race pace. 9:00-9:30 pace for you is probably about right. More than anything is it should feel easy so recovery continues.
Run Coach. Recovery Coach. Founder of SMART Approach Training, Coaching & Recovery
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Thanks, this is a good tool to help me prescribe times for certain types of runs. It gave me 9:18 as my fastest easy run pace which sounds correct. It will also help to put in slightly faster times than my PR's to show me what I need to be doing for the speed work to get to those improvements.
Are we there, yet?
It will also help to put in slightly faster times than my PR's to show me what I need to be doing for the speed work to get to those improvements.
It doesn't work very well that way. The times are already set to provide the training stress for improvement, so running faster is really counterproductive - extra energy expended, more fatigue, with very little payback.
2024 Races:
03/09 - Livingston Oval Ultra 6-Hour, 22.88 miles
05/11 - D3 50K 05/25 - What the Duck 12-Hour
06/17 - 6 Days in the Dome 12-Hour.
Thanks for the reality check. My focus right now is on the 10-miler and half races in the series I am running so I probably won't be doing any true speed work any time soon. I'm just focusing on getting in the miles and doing a long tempo run at least once per week.