Chances are, you answered yes (or “maybe!”) to the question above!

Just about every runner I’ve worked with will have a tendency to run their easy days too hard from time to time.

It’s the #1 most common running mistake, and it also happens to be the #1 hardest habit to fix.

Why? Because being Lightning McQueen feels good. The breeze feels good. The flow feels good. The speed feels good.

We feel unstoppable when we feel fast.

Feeling slow makes us feel powerless, and less likely to get into that sweet “flow” state.

And that’s a shame, because the secret sauce of long-term development lies within Z1 & Z2 work. Everyone knows this, but it’s harder to truly embody it.

All of the athletes that I work with do a decent job keeping their easy days relatively easy.

But most of those same athletes do slip up from time to time in letting the excitement, the energy, or the flow of a run get to them. Just like we all do!

So there are some important distinctions to make.

First of all, intensity can be tolerated in small doses, up to every single day if we really wanted.

Strides are the magic formula and the secret sauce, where biomechanical efficiency harmonizes with speed development.

RELATED: The benefits of strides

Strides can be added to any run day, any day of the week, apart from (usually) the longest run of the week, which is already meant to take a harder toll on the body.

Strides are like the dessert on top of the healthy meal. You eat dessert in moderation, maybe even one small thing a day. But too much just becomes counterproductive.

That is… too much speed. Too much intensity becomes counter-productive.

Beyond strides, you can also increase your pace on the odd uphill, downhill or stranger you want to impress. But this should remain more of a moment, than an overarching flow you get into.

Second key note – all athletes that I work with have up to two higher demand days scheduled into their training every single week.

While the cumulative volume of easy work is where fitness truly develops, these two days will remain the two most important days of the week.

Save yourself for these two days.

These are the two days to get right, and get fast.

Therefore, we generally want to avoid speed and intensity (including strength work) in the day before these two days. At most – strides; at minimum – an entire rest day. A scheduled easy run before a long run should therefore always be kept easy.

The next day is going to be hard. The goal of that day is to get you to do a hard thing. And you can’t do that hard thing as effectively and as risk-free, if you’ve already beaten up your body.

Remember, intensity is like dessert or a nice wine, if that’s what you’re into. You need to have it in moderation, or else any benefits start to have diminishing returns instead.

Third of all, the easy pace for Jon Albon or Anna Gibson is not always an easy pace for the rest of us.

Jon’s easy runs often exist in a heart rate of 110-130bpm, hitting paces faster than most run their races.

Anna Gibson sets FKT’s with her heart rate rarely exceeding 155bpm. She’s a freak of nature.

When you see athletes like this hitting fast paces on their “easy day jogs”, it is because to them that really is an easy day jog. You need to figure out what “easy” truly looks like for you, and not have it be a comparison to anyone else.

Some days my truly easy can be as fast as 4:15/km on flat, and 3:45/km on downhills. I can stay in the 140’s through all of that. But truly easy exists when I can dial it back even more, and spend more time in the 120’s and 130’s.

In every single study that exists on elite runners, they find that the athletes train most of their time in Z1/Z2, and that total running volume is one of the best predictors of performance.

What’s the best way to safely build volume? Run more easy, low-impact miles.

So how do you know if you’re going too fast?

Believe me, you usually know! It’s usually something you can feel, because it feels so good.

It’s sad to say, but usually when you’re feeling really good in a run, it’s because you’re moving faster than you should.

You can then combine that instinctive feeling with science like…

• Heart-rate data (attempting to not exceed certain numbers).
• Pace (slowing down when you see certain pace values).
• Or even things like Strava’s “Relative Effort” data.

For example, my 20K long run today had a “Relative Effort” of 34. That’s low. I know I carefully and casually increased intensity in some moments, but Strava is able to tell me that this was all really well in check.

Anything over 100 on that Strava score is usually going to take somewhat of a toll on your body. And Strava will tell you exactly that. It’ll say something like “Massive Historical Effort” on the web version, and show you where that score stacks up to your other runs on the mobile version.

For me, I know that 34 is on the lower end of average for me. I do workouts at a high intensity, sometimes have speed factored into long runs, and perhaps more crucially, today was a day without any strides.

34 is exactly where I want to be on an “easy long run day” like this. And while wrist-based heart rate data isn’t always accurate, there’s a lot to take away from keeping tabs on your “Relative Effort”, and keeping it in check.

So if you haven’t paid much attention to it, the metric might be one to take a deeper look into, in addition to just paying attention to that “feeling.” You know the one.

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All of the athletes I work with are putting in such hard work to get to their race goals. But you have to remember that your race goals aren’t decided in training. You don’t need to race through your training, and training is not a race.

Easy days are what builds long-term development, and they only work if you keep them truly easy.

Thanks for reading and see you soon!