Yesterday was all about pushing yourself through intervals and today is all about the RECOVERY day…read as: easy day.
Keep your easy days at a conversational pace.
Here is where people can make one of the TOP mistakes in training: going too hard on their easy days. This might work for a period of time, and they might actually get a little ‘boost’ in the short term, but what will soon happen is all of that will catch up to them and then strap in for a nosedive.
The days that you will then want to actually go hard on, your intervals or workout days, will start to suffer. You’ll feel tired, the paces will feel insurmountably more difficult than they should be, and you won’t have that ‘pop.’ You’ll be feeling flat because what happened is you blurred all the days of your week.
There won’t be the difference between hard and easy days, they’ll all just turn into a blurry shade of grey. Not good, and trust me not fun. I step forward as being guilty of this in the past…whether it is because you are just feeling excited and good and want to go faster, you are new to a team and trying too hard to keep up, are competitive on a team and trying to play that ‘top dog’ game, or just feel ‘guilty’ about going too easy (ahem, this girl) it’s not smart. Easy days need to be easy.
So, relish those recovery days and know this is the times that your body needs to just regroup and…well, recover. It’s really just about putting in the cardio and miles, so keep it conversational. That way, you’ll be able to actually hit it come the next hard workout day or even more important, race!
1) Easy days, how do you keep yourself in check?
2) Have you learned this lesson the hard way?
3) Best thing about easy days?
Just enjoying being out there and not getting stressed about any kind of pace!
I have a hard time going easy too . As a pretty new runner, once I know I am capable of a faster pace I want to run that all the time! I love running with groups that go at my easy pace, so I am not tempted to speed up.
great way to stay in check AND good company is always a perfect way to spend a run 🙂
best thing about easy days is the mental and physical break!!!! it is tough to hold myself back at times though. usually i go with my easy runs on the TM. that way, I just set the pace and dont change it. plus I normally have my book so I can just go until the TM stops! these posts have been so relevant to me this week…loving that 🙂
okay, wat the heck, how are u suddenly getting automatically put into the SPAM pile?!?! it is insane, it only just started doing it cuz u used to be able to post…i’m gonna have a wordpress smackdown!!!
other than that, ummm, ya, u are an awesome treadmill reader and we all benefit cuz u share wat u learn! 🙂
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I am so, so guilty of this right now :-O. Bad newbie runner over here. Because taper is about to arrive, I feel like I’m just trying to make every workout ‘count’ – glad you caught me out with this related post!
OH NO!!! kate, seriously, taper time is NOT the time to let ‘runner guilt’ push u into blasting the easy days. u do that and it’s like counter-balancing the point of the taper, which is to rest…lol. don’t worry, we all have been there AND we all have to struggle with runner guilt. ironically, sometimes the hardest parts of training are the times u have to actually do less. 😛
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