The power of easy running

The other day I got an interesting question from one of the athletes I’m coaching. Dan messaged me to say: “What are the benefits of easy runs? (To help me be disciplined.)” I do like to sprinkle a few very easy runs through my weekly schedules, but Dan clearly wasn’t convinced of their value. He continued: “Quite often I go out for an ‘easy run’ but halfway round I can’t help pushing a bit harder. I’d say it’s mainly that I need to switch from ‘making the most of every run’ to a longer term perspective.”

It’s an interesting one, and I remember feeling exactly the same. Before I went to Kenya, I felt that every run had to count, and that meant I had to feel tired by the end of it. That would mean I’d worked out, pushed my body, and I was getting fitter. Right? An easy run, where you feel, well, easy the entire time, seemed a little pointless.

Although it’s becoming less common, there are still many people in running who see these easy runs as pointless, and they still often get given the pejorative name “junk miles”.

But then I went for a run with the world record holder over 10K (at the time), Micah Kogo, along with the women’s world champion over 10,000m, Vivian Cheruiyot, and a couple of other top Kenyan athletes. At first, when we started running, I thought they were playing a joke on me. “Come on,” I said after a few minutes. “I’m not that slow!” We were jogging at slower than 10 minutes per mile pace (6.15 mins per km).

“What?” they said, sounding surprised. “Today is easy.” They said it as though they were patiently explaining something very obvious to someone who was clearly a bit slow on the uptake.