Whenever you go out for a run – whether it be an easy day, tempo run, speed session, or long run – it’s vital you first ask yourself the purpose of the workout.
When you know why you’re setting out to run a prescribed distance and pace, you’re better able to execute the purpose of that session.
When you don’t know why, you’re setting yourself up for some “junk miles”.
Listen in as Coach Claire discusses the consequences of junk miles and how to avoid them to get the most out of your workouts.
Audio Transcript
Claire: Hello everyone. I’m back again to host another episode of the Run to the Top Extra Kick podcast.
We have a great question today from Ravine about junk miles.
Ravine: I’ve heard conflicting views on recovery day pace. Some seem to think it’s good to take these days slow to allow for recovery, but others suggest that this can become junk mileage.
What are junk miles and how fast should we aim for on a recovery run?
Thank you for your question Ravine. This is something we get a lot at Runners Connect and I’m so glad that I can clear up the confusion.
What you are asking is two separate questions, so I’ll tackle the junk mileage question first.
What are junk miles?
Junk miles is a misleading term, but they are any miles that don’t have a specific purpose.
By definition, junk miles are not recovery miles, because if you are recovering from a race or a hard workout, you have a purpose for those miles.
Every time you head out the door for a run, you need to know what you’re doing. If you need to run easy to recover, then you run easy.
If you are doing a tempo run, you need to stay on pace and if you’re doing intervals, those should have a specific effort level and a specific recovery period. Each one of those runs has a specific purpose to create a specific physiological response.
How many times have you set out on an easy run and decided that you felt good that day, and you picked up the pace just because you felt like it, and when you got home you checked out your speedy stats on your watch, uploaded your awesome run to Strava and generally felt pleased with yourself and your speediness?
Guess what, you just ran a bunch of junk miles and probably hurt your training.
Easy miles are the bread and butter of endurance training and when you go faster than a conversational pace, you are moving into the grey zone, which is not easy enough to allow you to recover and not hard enough to get much improvement.
Some people argue that tempo runs which are sustained comfortably hard efforts are junk miles.
They are all run in the mid-range of your speed ability, but they’re not anywhere close to your top end speed.
Why do most good endurance coaches still include them?
Tempo runs probably help you out far more mentally than they do physiologically, since they require both discipline and patience to run a sustained semi-hard effort that’s not too fast or not too slow, they can provide valuable practice for race day, but more is not better.
If you load up your calendar full of tempos, your results will suffer. Once every 14 to 10 days is best for most runners.
How about your hard days? Can you run junk miles there as well?
Absolutely. If you ease up and choose to bring your effort level down, all you are doing is reinforcing what your body already knows, those are junk miles.
To grow, you need to push just a little bit further or a little bit faster or a little bit harder than you did last time.
That’s how you get to the next level of performance. I’m not talking about pushing through pain or injury or sickness, I’m talking about making a choice to get uncomfortable on your hard days that is where the magic happens.
Let’s get back to the part of your question about recovery runs, these days need to be slow and conversational.
When you’ve just done a tough track workout the day before and you are feeling tight and sore, you need to slow that pace down.
If you don’t, not only will you not bounce back as fast, but you’ll need to recover from your recovery days.
The way I like to look at it it’s as if your speed is a finite commodity, you only have so much of it to spend per week.
Some people like to use a little bit of their speed every single day.
They run in their fun, happy zone that’s a little bit too quick to be called easy, but it feels good.
It’s not too fast and it’s not too slow and it generally just feels great, but then the fast days come and they don’t reach their potential.
They either cannot run fast enough on their hard days because they spent too much speed on an easy day or they go into debt on their speed days by pushing too hard there as well and they end up sore, burned out or injured.
On the other hand, if you choose to be stingy with your speed and save it only for when it’s needed, you will feel fresher when you line up for your intervals and be able to push closer to your threshold limits each time expanding your potential.
That’s how you have breakthroughs without burnout.
What’s your easy pace? The quick answer is whatever feels truly easy and then go slower.
You should be able to have an entire conversation as easily as if you were walking.
You should be able to breathe entirely out of your nose the whole time if you wanted to.
You should be able to sing your favourite song out loud not caring what the neighbours think, because as soon as you start going faster than that, it turns to junk.
One great way to keep your easy runs easy is to listen to a great book. Check out this week’s sponsor, Audible and get your own 30-day free trial at runnersconnect.net/audible.
Thanks for sending in your question, Ravine, and if you are listening and would like your question answered by one of the RunnersConnect coaches, head on over to runnersconnect.net/daily, click the record button and send your question over.
Finally, a word from our sponsor today.
It’s no secret that I run with headphones almost all the time. When I need to crank out some fast miles, nothing gets me more motivated than a great song with a dance beat.
As Runners Connect athletes all know, only 20% of our mileage is fast, so what do I listen to the other 80% of the time? That’s where Audible comes in.
With Audible I can download a thriller, listen to a cool biography, catch up on my monthly book club selection or travel to exotic lands, all while getting in my long easy miles.
Oh yes, they have all the latest running books too.
Right now I’m listening to Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind over Body by Jo Marchant and it’s absolutely fascinating. The only downside, I want to keep running after my runs over to hear the next chapter.
If you’d like to try it out, Audible has a free 30-day trial, so you can see if it’s right for you.
Check out Audible’s humongous library and start your free 30-day trial at runnersconnect.net/audible.
Have a great run today.
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