Terminator

Your treadmill must be getting tired but nice job putting it to work. I definitely used very different muscles running on the snow for 10 miles on Sunday. Probably wasn't the best idea with a hamstring problem but I think I survived with minimal damage. Are your "easy" TM miles in the 7's? Sorry, I had to ask. :)

You can always ask me anything you want Fritz! I'm glad you survived Sunday's snow run with minimal damage :) As you know, in college I used to be die-hard about never running slower than 6:30 miles -- ever. I really believe that was a huge mistake. Now I do whatever I feel my body needs, which often makes for some VERY slow running. My legs are quite sore from my workout yesterday morning, so yesterday evening I did 8:30 pace for a couple miles and then kept it at 8:00 for the rest of the run. This morning, I started at almost 9:00 for a mile, then kept it at 8:00 for 9 miles. This evening, I mostly did 8:00, but actually went down to 7:40 pace for the last couple miles.

Absolute snail pace. But it's allowing me to recover Fritz. It sure takes a lot of patience, because I just want to get it over with, but it feels right because of my current need for recovery. They are probably just junk miles, but I firmly believe a "junk" mile counts just as much as a 5:00 mile. I feel that running as easy as my body needs is one reason I've made good progress the past couple months. Sorry for the long answer -- I enjoyed the question Fritz. I never thought I'd be one to run so easy during recovery. I really believe there is something to it.

Truly inspirational. I am giving this a try tomorrow. Now I just need to wake up earlier to get in the same number of miles. :)

I failed today. Of course I had a distance goal and my shoveling set me back on time. Bad excuses I know. I will try again soon.

Hilarious Fritz! Yeah, that shoveling is really cramping our lifestyles. It's been non-stop.

18m on the TM? I don't know how you do it. Well done Matt. Can't wait for some clear roads.

I'm with Mike, 18 miles on a treadmill takes some doing.

It's funny reading all the snow clearing anecdotes. Over here, it rarely snows, but when it does we get about an inch and the country come to a halt. Nobody has to clear snow - that might be why.

Awesome miles Matt and I really enjoyed your answer to Fritz question about running easy. I know for a fact that I recover better when I run really slow on easy days. It can be VERY hard mentally but it really makes a huge difference and makes the hard days really count.

Bam, I'd sure love to see your neck of the woods some day. It sounds gorgeous in Ireland.

Thanks Rachelle. When I started running very easy on recovery days, I worried that it might negatively affect my faster running. Not only has this not been the case, but in fact the opposite has occurred.

I gotta chime in on this discussion on pace of easy runs. I think my view is contrary to 90% of this blog, but that's ok.

Matt, I used to hammer easy runs no slower than 6:30 too. This is one end of the spectrum and it's not wise to always run that fast.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have really, really easy or "junk" miles in the 7:30-9:00 or slower pace.

I think the best place to be (as is the case in most things) is somewhere in the middle of the two extremes.

I like to think of easy runs and recovery runs as two separate types of runs. A recovery run to me is any run within 24 hours or so of a hard workout. Recovery pace should be as slow as you feel you need. You will get some junk miles in a recovery run.

Easy runs are simply that, easy runs that don't fit the recovery category. These runs in my opinion SHOULD be in the 6:30-7:00 range. The goal of the run is no longer recovery (although you can still continue recovery at these paces), it is to at least maintain or even slightly improve aerobic capacity. You cannot do that at paces slower than 7:00 in my opinion.

So, my typical week is Monday easy (6:30-6:50 pace), Tuesday hard, Wednesday recovery (6:45-7:30, depending on how I feel), Thursday hard, Friday recovery, and then Saturday either hard or easy/hard finish (6:30-6:45 pace).

I think consecutive easy/recovery days slower than 7:30 are unneccesary. And if one feels they "need" two days in a row at that slow of a pace, they are either doing too much volume for their fitness level or they are doing their hard workouts too fast.

That's my view and I know most (90% most likely) on this blog disagree and love high volume with lots of slow miles, but I had to get this off my chest. You can all now shake your heads, think I don't know what I'm talking about, and move on, and that's fine I won't be offended. :-)

Riley, thanks for your wise comments. Very perceptive, and I really appreciate your insight. I think you and I see a lot more eye-to-eye than you realize. Let me clarify. Most of my easy runs are near 7:00 pace, sometimes faster and sometimes slower. The point I was trying to make is that now I just go by feel, whereas in college I never did anything slower than 6:30. I was injured a lot in college, and looking back I feel doing this contributed to my injures. I've learned (and only recently) that this is not necessary.

Occasionally I will do an entire run at 8:00 pace. This week, I did several runs at that pace because it felt right. My legs were thrashed from Monday, so 8:00 pace felt right for a couple days. Although lung-wise my workout Monday felt like a walk in the park, for my legs it was hard work. Perhaps (as you talked about) I over-did it on Monday and needed too many slow-paced runs afterword.

But I'll tell ya, I really do believe that long, slow miles (when necessary) are just as important as fast miles. Maybe not aerobically, but recovery-wise, etc.

Great comments and advice, Riley!