Rojo vs. Alex Gibby

wejo’s “slow” and Graham’s “slow” are not the same.

Graham is training to be a sub-12:50 guy. Weldon was a 13:59 guy.

I had a coworker who was an NCAA all-American and 2:10 marathoner. He would often do much of his maintenance runs close to 6:00/mile. It was easy for him. He once said to me, “I’m trying to qualify for the Olympics. I can’t be f*cking around running 7:00 miles.”

Overall, your pace on easy days is a minor concern as long as you are coming in fresh for workouts.

Pace is variable and relative to your race pace, yes, but intensity defined by heart rate not so much. If I remember correctly, Gibby said he likes to have his athletes around or above 150 bpm (can't remember exactly) on their normal distance days. For a 22 year-old like Blanks that's probably 75% of his max heart rate...pretty high for an easy run in the Rojo / JK training philosophy. In a three-zone model that is at the lower end of Zone 2. Would really like to hear more from JK on running those easy days faster!

I think there is zero question that you get more aerobic benefit running 5:30-6:00 pace than 6:30-7:00 or 7:30-8:00 pace. But you also introduce more stress and fatigue. So it really comes down to the point where the benefits outweigh the costs. This is going to depend on the individual athlete's recovery speed (usually a factor of age) and the other stressors in the training program. Jakob Ingebrigtsen is supposed to run 3:45-4:00 per km on his easy runs (sometimes he doesn't listen haha). That's pretty slow for a guy who's 5k pace is probably 2:30-2:32 per km. But it makes sense when you consider that he has huge amounts of stress 3 days a week with double workout days. The Kenyans take it even further, often starting their double runs upwards of 5:00 per km. Once again, this is because their workouts are hugely stressful (50 minute fartlek averaging under 5:00 miles for the whole thing, 12x1k@2:50ish, 40k long run with the bulk of it at 3:00-3:20 per km). In order to keep his athletes healthy, I imagine Gibby is reducing the stress somewhere else (in the workouts, weight room, etc.) to compensate.

Also important to remember the body's recovery time is an improvable factor. This is why many athletes will double or triple during the season in preparation for doing so at a championship meet, or to simulate the rounds. If you run 5:30 pace every single day, eventually your body will start to get used to it, and you'll be able to recover. As long as you ramp it up slowly enough to not kill yourself, you can train your body to handle an enormous amount of stress. Whether or not that level of stress is necessary/effective...depends on the athlete.

So that's one argument that I've heard frequently - that faster easy days limit your recovery so when it comes to your hard days, you're just a little too fatigued to go hard enough to maximize effort / fitness gains. On the podcast Gibby touched on this, and said he gets around it by prioritizing rest and recovery. He basically said that if you're serious about rest and recovery, and you introduce the stress of being "on the more efficient side of easy" (paraphrasing what he said about normal / non-workout running), than you can manage fatigue and still have enough pop to get the intensity correct on your hard days. Your post gets at this.

And you'll hear Rojo / JK talk about this too. But that's only one reason to take your easy days super easy. Those two also talk about adaptations that occur at super easy paces that don't occur at moderate intensity, that allow you to benefit more from the hard training. Can't remember all of them, but one was building capillaries and maybe another had something to do with mitochondria.

So I've always been a big believer in super easy easy days, with a lot of progression and cut down type workouts.

It was just interesting to hear JK go back on that a bit in the training article.

And the Brojos / JK aren't the only ones that make this argument. Pretty much everyone now across running, cross country skiing, cycling etc. advocates for avoiding the dreaded middle intensity zones. But it seems like that's where Gibby's athletes live.

Wejo was a 28:0x guy training 120 mpw at altitude 7+ miles made sense

It depends how you define easy / super easy

When I was in 14:20 shape (and low 4:0x shape - I was very aerobically based but my best times went 3000 > mile > 5000) I’d probably run easy at 7:15 in summer (flat), 7:00 to 6:45 in October or another time with cooler weather. But the day after a high volume or hard workout would be 7:30 to 7:45.

6:45 is definitely more stressful than 7:30, but for someone who runs 4:36 pace for 3.1 miles, it’s not going to take a ton out of you either