Hello and welcome to the Runners Connect audio blog this is Coach Claire Bartholic and today I am reading an article

written by Coach Jeff Gaudette called How Fast Should Your Easy Runs Be. A common question and one of the more difficult concepts of training to

comprehend is how to easy runs help me race faster. If you want to run a marathon at nine minutes per mile,

how does running five to eight miles slow or even your entire long run at 1030 pace

help you? Wouldn't running all your miles as close to nine minute

pace as possible make more sense? You would think, but no. Logically, it would make sense that pushing your easy run pace as close to race pace as possible

would help you get fitter, quicker, and ultimately run faster.

After all, the harder you work, the better you get, right?

Yet, most good coaches will tell you to run slow on your easy days,

and your easy running cadence should be the same as your other runs. We found that running 80%

easy will make most runners 23% faster, which you can read more about if you need

the research.

Now, at Runners Connect, almost all our new team members ask at some point,

why are my easy days so slow?

Or how am I supposed to run fast if I'm running easy all the time?

The answer to these questions lies in what coaches call the aerobic system.

The aerobic system and thus aerobic development is the one true secret to

training and it's the key to unlocking your potential. In this article we're

going to examine why the aerobic system is so important, what the aerobic system is, and how to target it in training.

Why do I need to run easy? The first step to understanding just how important the

aerobic system is to distance running is to identify the percentage of energy

contribution the aerobic system provides for

...