Go easy man!

I had been doing a fair amount of running lately and each time I went out I blew my brains out.  Pushing to finish faster than the time before.  Now that may sound alright but my body sure didn't think it was such a great idea.  After doing a little searching and speaking to some more experienced runners I discovered that I needed to add true easy runs to my schedule.

So now I have made a plan. A good plan with rest days and easy days and long days.  But the most important are the easy days.  I need to give my body time to heal between runs.  I had noticed that I had been more and more fatigued at the start of every run no matter how much time I had taken to rest.  So tonight I tried an easy run.  I added a full minute per km to my race pace.  Now I didn't magically come up with this pace.  I didn't even have a pace in mind except comfortably slow.  We just ran.  Not raced but ran.  Sped up a little when things were easy and then slowed down with the hills.  Time was not a consideration.  When we got back we looked at what we had done and it was a minute slower.  Now it wasn't even a minute slower it was on pace with what I had been running but because I controlled my pace evenly my start was much slower but my end was much faster and I was able to keep moving throughout the whole session.  It was a minute slower than my goal race pace.


But was all the research worth it?  I think so. I actually felt better at the end of the run than I did before I started.  My legs were less sore and my joints seemed much happier.  Tomorrow I will be adding distance to my run to create the hard run for my hard/easy cycle.  Then the next will be the same easy run hopefully with Jill and the kids again.  They seemed to be more than happy with the slower pace and as long as I kept pace with them I was on track.