build a foundation<\/a>.\u00a0 Building this foundation is how your body adjusts to the stresses of road running over time and will ultimately lead to improved race times and a lower risk of injury.<\/p>\nEasy running will help you earn stronger bones, tougher joints, improved running economy, develop slow twitch, fat burning muscles and increased aerobic capacity without beating yourself up.\u00a0 You need fast days to work on turnover, mitochondria and VO2max but easy days are not necessarily ‘junk miles’ because you’re still working towards a goal.\u00a0 As long as each run has a purpose your time and effort is never wasted.<\/p>\n
That’s because going as fast as you can all the time is asking for trouble.\u00a0 Your body has to take care of itself after hard workouts.\u00a0 It has to repair damaged muscle, expand blood vessels and learn to process more oxygen.\u00a0 An easy workout helps clear out waste from muscles, improve circulation and might actually help speed muscle recovery.\u00a0 If you push all the time, those processes never get to finish their jobs and you’re inviting over training and burnout.\u00a0 Alternating hard and easy running workouts gives your body a chance to make all of the positive performance enhancing adaptations it can.<\/p>\n
The most important thing is to make sure your easy running is just that.\u00a0 Easy.\u00a0 Aim to be at least one minute slower than your goal race pace for the duration of an easy workout and remember that easy is relative.\u00a0 Some days it will be closer to race pace while the run after a hard workout might be slower. Make sure the pace is conversational and your heart rate stays low.<\/p>\n
As your fitness level increases it can become hard to slow the pace down.\u00a0 Keep the goal of each workout in mind when you’re out there feeling like you’re not accomplishing anything.\u00a0 Your body has to have time to adapt to training stimuli so you can ultimately increase your performance level.<\/p>\n
Coach Meredith<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slow down!\u00a0 We’ve all heard it but we might not know why. Here are a few of the reasons easy running is important and how it will benefit your next race. Easy running might seem boring.\u00a0 How can you get faster if you don’t actually run faster?\u00a0 The truth is you can’t.\u00a0 To improve speed, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[7,14,15],"tags":[57,55,56,9],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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or burnout.\u00a0 The purpose of easy running is to build a foundation<\/a>.\u00a0 Building this foundation is how your body adjusts to the stresses of road running over time and will ultimately lead to improved race times and a lower risk of injury.<\/p>\n