Here is the most repeated, most ignored advice in running: your easy runs should be easy. Everyone nods. Almost nobody complies. Then everyone wonders why they're always tired, always slightly injured, and never getting faster. Let's fix that, or at least feel guilty about it together.
What easy pace actually is
Easy pace is conversational pace — full sentences, not gasped fragments. For most recreational runners that's sixty to ninety seconds per mile slower than their "natural" run pace, sometimes more. If you race a 5K around 30 minutes, your easy pace is probably somewhere north of 11-minute miles. If that number offends you, good. That's the point of the article.
Why slow running makes you faster (the short science bit)
Easy running builds your aerobic engine: more capillaries, more mitochondria, a stronger heart, tendons and joints that can tolerate more work. This is the foundation everything else sits on. Run every run at medium-hard and you get medium fitness with maximum fatigue — too tired to run truly fast on hard days, too beaten up to recover on easy ones. It's the training equivalent of shouting in every conversation.
The 80/20 thing, honestly explained
You'll hear that elites run 80% of their mileage easy. True. You'll conclude it doesn't apply to you because you run three times a week. Partly true. The principle survives: most of your running should feel comfortable, and the small remainder should be properly hard. What most people do instead — everything at 7 out of 10 — is the one distribution with no defenders anywhere in sports science.
Why nobody does it: an incomplete list
- Strava. The pace is public. Slowing down feels like publishing a bad school report.
- It feels wrong. Genuinely easy running feels like you're getting away with something.
- Overtaking. Being passed by a dog, a toddler on a balance bike, or a man carrying shopping is a spiritual test.
- Impatience. Slow runs pay out in months, not days. Humans are bad at this.
How to actually run slower
Hide the pace. Set your watch to show time only, or heart rate. What the wrist doesn't display, the ego can't argue with.
Use the talk test constantly. Mid-run, say a full sentence out loud. If you can't, slow down. Talking to yourself in a park is a small social price for functioning tendons.
Run with someone slower, or chat while you run. Conversation enforces the pace automatically, and a recruited friend makes the slow miles considerably less boring.
Reframe the maths. A slower easy pace means more minutes per mile, which means more actual training per run. You're not doing less. You're doing more, gently.
When it's okay to run hard
Once or twice a week, with purpose: intervals, a tempo, a parkrun raced honestly. Hard days exist and they matter. The rule isn't "never fast" — it's "fast on purpose, easy the rest of the time." What kills progress is the accidental middle: every run vaguely hard, no run truly anything.
The embarrassment is the tax. Pay it.
Yes, your easy pace looks slow on the feed. Post it anyway, or don't post at all. The runners who improve year after year are, almost universally, the ones jogging past the duck pond at a pace that looks like an apology. They know something. Now you do too.
From THE ORDINARY TIMES — advice for runners with no medals and no plans to get any. Kit for the slow miles: The Full Kit.
The kit, briefly
Easy running means more time on your feet, which means kit you stop noticing. The Blister Socks matter more as the minutes add up, and everything else is in The Kit.
Common questions
How slow should easy runs actually be?
Slow enough to hold a full conversation in complete sentences. For most people that is somewhere between sixty and ninety seconds per kilometre slower than 5K pace, and it will feel embarrassingly gentle.
What percentage of my running should be easy?
Roughly eighty per cent. The exact figure matters less than the principle: most of your running should be comfortable, and the hard sessions should be genuinely hard because you are fresh for them.
Why do my easy runs feel so hard?
Usually because they are not easy. The most common mistake in amateur running is turning every run into a moderate effort, which is too hard to recover from and too easy to drive adaptation.
Should I walk during easy runs?
If walking keeps the effort genuinely easy, walk. Run-walk is a legitimate method used by very experienced runners, not a beginner compromise, and the physiological benefit does not care which one you were doing.
Will running slowly make me slow?
No. Running slowly builds the aerobic base that lets you run fast when it matters. Runners who only ever run moderately hard tend to plateau; runners who run mostly easy tend not to.
Related reading: how to breathe while running, in defence of the 35 minute 5K, what running twice a week does.