Heather Fell: Yes, running easy can lead to you running faster. It's a bold statement,
but it's true. Far too many of us spend too much of our time running too fast in training. As a
result, we don't reach our full potential when it comes to racing. Sound too good to be true? Well,
stick with us for this video because I'm going to be explaining what this means and how you can
adapt your training to optimize your speed. [music]
This is quite a hard one to get your head around as you would logically think that the more time
you spend running at or close to your race pace, the better prepared you're going to be.
Let's take a marathon, for example. Then your race place isn't going to be
that hard and you're also not going to be spending the full 42k in training, running at that pace,
for example. You'd also think that the more time you spend working really hard and running fast
in training, the quicker the period of time that you're going to see an improvement.
It's not really a surprise that we see this common mistake all the time of people running too fast,
too much of the time. Why is it such a bad thing? Why do you need to run slower?
There have been some studies around this. One fairly comprehensive five-month study
took top-level club runners and had them training at two different intensities. One group were
training 80% of their runs, were easy with 20% at threshold or higher whereas the other group
had 65% of their time at easy, and then the rest was higher. It turned out that there was a 23%
improvement for the group that spent 80% of their time training easy.
How does this translate to training? Well, it's all about the
base, that foundation that you're laying, that aerobic base work which you can then
put the building blocks of the fast work on top of. That doesn't mean that just because
you've been running X amount of time that you can suddenly neglect this period of running.
It's something that always needs to be there. It does just mean if you've been running for a longer
period of time that your fast efforts are likely to be faster. Maybe even your easy run is going to
be slightly a bit quicker, but it's not the pace that matters on the easy run. It's the intensity.
I'll come onto how easy, easy it should be in a moment. First,
I want to look at the why and what exactly is happening to our bodies when we're running
at this nice easy pace. We're taking on enough oxygen so that our muscles can work efficiently.
Aerobic basically means there's enough oxygen in the cells to enable aerobic glycolysis,
which in simple terms, is the oxygen helping to break down that stored energy within the cells
and turning it into fuel that the muscles can use, which means they can continue to work efficiently
for a long period of time. [music]
The significance of this? Well, training in the aerobic zone will
make your body better, being able to utilize that oxygen that is available,
making it more efficient and therefore, you'll be able to run faster. Let's take a look at some
popular running distances. A 10K, for example. Study has actually shown that throughout that,
you spend 90% of your time working aerobically, 84% for a 5K and a whopping
99% for a marathon. It proves that the aerobic system is rather important.
The best way of building up your aerobic capacity is to spend more time training aerobically. You
want to, within reason, reflect the amount of time you're going to be aerobic in that race.
Hopefully, that makes sense. [music]
We now understand the basics of the aerobic system and what's happening when we're training. I just
want to touch on a little bit more detail what's actually happening physiologically at the cellular
level. When you're doing more aerobic training, you're going to be increasing the amount of
capillaries. These are the tiny blood vessels in your muscles which help get the oxygenated blood
to your muscles and the deoxygenated blood away. You also get an increase in myoglobin which is a
protein that sits in the cell and helps carry the oxygen into the cells. You also get an increase
in the amount and the size of mitochondria. These are basically microscopic powerhouses
that help convert the carbohydrate that is in the cell into ATP which is energy.
These changes and adaptations happen at slightly varied intensities, but they do all fall within
a bracket. If you're familiar with your VO2 max pace, well, they're between the 60% and
75% of that or if you're more familiar with your 5K race pace, then somewhere between 55% and 75%
of that. This might all sound rather slow. Well, that's because it is. You just need to
think about all of those benefits that we've already talked about, and also a few other
benefits that are maybe more tangible such as it's much easier to motivate yourself to go and do an
easy run when you know it's not going to hurt. I must admit, I am far quicker getting out the
door if it's just an easy run plan compared to a really tough session. It's usually more sociable
because you're not going to be out of breath so you can have a nice chat with a friend. Also,
it's less stressful on your body. A 60-minute easy run is going to be far less stress on the
body than a 60-minute run that's got some tough intervals in it. You're less likely to get any
niggles or aches and pains after such a run. [music]
There are certain schools of thought such as the Maffetone training method that prescribe
long periods of low-level aerobic work. Minimum of three months when it comes to the Maffetone. Now,
I don't know about you, but I would find that far too boring. Also, it would eliminate any
kind of hills. Now, for a bit of variety, it's a great way to do 80%, 20%. We talked about that
in the previous video if you're spending 80% of your running in that aerobic zone.
If you do want some more info on how to structure that into your training, well,
check out our recent video we did on GTN, looking at purely just that. Remember,
easy does need to be really easy. Whether that's your recovery run or your long steady run,
it needs to be kept under control. It can be really tempting if you're feeling good
to just start to push that tempo and see where you're at. You need to try and bottle that really
feel good feeling and take it with you onto your next key tough session because the hard stuff
needs to be hard too. [music]
It's worth thinking about your running goals too as the longer your race that you might
be targeting, then the more important the easy runs, all those steady state runs become. You're
probably going to need to spend more time doing them as well. If anyone accuses you of being lazy
when you're out for an easy or steady run, you can now bombard them with all the benefits. I
have to admit that the lazy part inside me is quite happy to embrace those easy runs.
Just remember, you still can't neglect the key quality work too. Hopefully, you've enjoyed it.
You're going to go out there and have a nice easy run. After this, hit the thumbs up button. If
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