Easy and Recovery Runs

What easy running is for

An easy run is a run you could hold a conversation through. It does three jobs: it builds your aerobic system, it adds volume without the cost of a hard session, and it lets you recover between the days that matter. Run it well and the hard days go better, because you arrive at them fresh.

Easy running builds the same machinery that hard running builds, more slowly per hour. In a meta-analysis of 353 training studies, the amount of mitochondria in the muscle rose 23% with low or moderate intensity continuous training, and across all kinds of training, more sessions a week went with larger gains (six over four, four over two). High-intensity training built about 1.7 times as much per hour¹. You can only recover from so many hard sessions in a week, so easy running is how the hours add up.

A recreational runner usually does best with most runs of 45 to 60 minutes on three to seven days a week. Five runs of 40 to 45 minutes beat seven runs of 20 to 30.

How easy is easy

Run easy by effort and not by pace. You can speak in full sentences, your breathing never turns to huffing, and it feels like a four or five out of ten. In a five-zone model that is zone 2, and zone 1 is easier still (see the guide on heart-rate zones). The guide on the talk test covers how to check it, including why to judge it a few minutes in and not in the first minute.

Let the pace fall when the effort asks for it. Heat, hills, a bad night of sleep and tired legs all slow the pace that gives you the same effort, and in hot weather or on a stressful week it is fine to run without watching the numbers at all.

Slower than you think is fine. A jog that keeps you conversational still does the work. If you have to go very slow to stay conversational, add time and not speed.

Two checks tell you the run was easy. You feel okay the next day, and your next hard session hits its paces. If your easy runs leave you flat for the hard ones, they were too hard. A moderate run on top of a week with plenty of hard work only tires you for the real work.

From your 40s on, you cannot get away with as much, so take easy days very easy.

If you are new to running

Start with run-walk, and plan the walk breaks before you get tired. If you cannot talk, slow down and walk more. That fixes it better than any breathing trick. The most common mistake is running too fast.

Run three days a week with a rest day between, to start. The rest day is your recovery, so you do not need a recovery run. See the guide on beginner running.

How much of your week is easy

Most of it. Among 119,452 marathon runners tracked on Strava, the fastest (120 to 150 minute marathons) ran more than three times the weekly volume of slower runners, and the extra came mostly from low-intensity running. The data are observational, so they show what faster runners do and not that doing it made them faster². Most recreational runners have not found their volume limit, and more easy running usually pays first.

In practice that means no more than two hard sessions a week, and a long run that is easy unless it carries pace work. Everything else is easy. Never put two hard workouts back to back. See the guide on polarized training for what is known about the middle zone, and the guide on the long run for pace work inside it.

The one kind of speed that belongs on an easy day is a few strides at the end of the run. See the guide on strides.

Recovery runs

A recovery run is an easy run kept short and very easy, run after a hard session or a long run. Its job is to add or keep volume without adding stress, so run it slowly. Advanced marathoners who run 2:30 to 3:00 run 9-minute miles and slower the day after a key workout.

A recovery run is optional. If you are injury-prone, a bike, elliptical or water-running session can replace it.

After a marathon, easy running did not get in the way. In a 2021 trial of 64 marathon finishers (average finish 3:35), 40 minutes of running at about the heart rate of the first ventilatory threshold, at 48, 96 and 144 hours after the race, left blood markers of muscle damage no different from resting, and squat jump height at 96 hours was higher than in the group that rested³. For how long to recover after a race before you start training again, see the guide on periodization.