 Alright, so easy running. What does that really mean? What does it mean to be running easy? What kind of heart rate should you be aiming for? How should it feel? Why is it good? When should you run easy? When should you run hard? Let's talk about all those topics in today's video. Stay tuned. So even though it sounds kind of counter-intuitive, easy running is actually the foundation of any endurance type training regimen. Top-level athletes at the marathon, the half marathon, even down to 3k, honestly, even all the way down to middle distance runners, easy running accounts for the majority of their time spent training. And that's because in long-distance events, basically anything lasting more than a minute or two relies heavily on the aerobic system. And the aerobic system is best trained based on time rather than intensity. So basically, the more time we spend running, the better it is. And the rule is really that, the more the better. But you need to stay injury-free and you don't want to get over-trained. So there are certainly human limits, but more importantly, there are individual limits depending on your current state of health and fitness at any given time. So except for specific workouts that are done at a harder pace, at a harder intensity, most of your runs should be spent at that easy intensity. But what does that mean though? What is easy intensity? And Mark Walsh asked this question on one of my videos. He says, I've always wondered the definition of a slow run to build aerobic base. I find it impossible to stay within the zone 2 heart rate zone on my garment. And basically, what does it mean to be easy running? And how much time should you do this? Well, I just answered the second question. You should do it as much as possible, basically, up to however much you can tolerate and however much you can allow for in terms of your schedule. What is an easy pace though? Well, we can define it mainly in two ways. We can talk about heart rate or we can talk about pace. So heart rate, well, the best way to do that is to establish your maximum heart rate. So you need to do a maximum heart rate test and I haven't done a video on that yet, but go on Google search for a max heart rate test and you'll figure it out. Basically, when you know your max heart rate, you can then calculate the various percentages of that max heart rate for various training intensities. And when we're talking easy, we're really talking what's known as zone one, zone two. Really, as you get into zone three, that's more of a marathon, a slightly harder effort, zone four as a threshold effort, zone five as an all out sort of interval view to max type effort. So we're really talking when we say easy about zone one and zone two, the definitions of those zones vary a little bit. You can set your own definitions depending on your own body when you start to get to know yourself in training. But generally speaking, zone one would be a very easy intensity, sort of recovery type training. And that might be as low as 60% of your max heart rate up to maybe 70%, 72 even, of your max heart rate. So say your max heart rate is 190. Well, 70% of that is 133 beats per minute. So if you want to stay in zone one, you want to stay in that 120, 125, 130 BPM type of pulse range. And as for a beginner, that might be a walk. Remember, we'll get into that. Now, zone two is a little bit more of your everyday pace. It's not something, you know, if you really need to recover from a hard workout, you'll do that zone one thing. But for most of your runs and for your long runs, etc., you might want to just hang around in zone two. And that's more like maybe 70%. Even you can stretch it as much as up to 80% of your max heart rate. So if we're saying 75%, as the sweet spot say, for example, and your heart rate, max heart rate was 190, then 75% of that is 142 BPM. So maybe you want to stay below 150 or something like that, right? So you have to figure it out for yourself and calculate your own zones. But generally speaking, easy running is done at 60 to 80% of your max heart rate, something like that. That's a very objective way to look at it. And that's really the most important part because when you're training an aerobic system, you're training your metabolic system to a large degree in your heart and your cardiovascular system. And this is really done well at this intensity, as well as fat burning abilities, your ability to burn fat as a fuel, which conserves your glycogen stores. And this is a good thing in a marathon, for example. So you want to stay in that easy intensity to enhance that fat burning. Now, the other way to look at it was pace. And in terms of pace, that varies a lot. It depends on your level. But generally speaking, your easy pace should probably be a minute or even up to two minutes slower than, for example, your lactate threshold pace, right? That's something that I'm just throwing out there. It might not be completely accurate. But generally speaking, there's no lower limit, actually, as long as you're in that heart rate zone, the pace doesn't matter as much. The pace matters if you want to train your muscular system to tolerate the stress of a certain pace. For example, if you want to train for a marathon, you need to be used to marathon pace. And so in that case, your specific pace matters a lot. But when you're training your aerobic system and it's all about that easy running, the pace doesn't really matter as much. Here's an important thing, though. All of this is individual, okay? So a slow pace for you might be a really fast pace for someone less fit. Pace is really relative to the race that you're doing and the time goal that you have for that race. So your race pace is really sort of a point of reference. And then slower than that is slow and faster than that is fast. That depends on your fitness and your goals. So when Elliot Kipchoge goes out for an easy run, he does that at like 315, 330 minutes per kilometer type pace, I believe, which is like ridiculously fast. For me, that's like my mile race pace, maybe even faster than that. I could do that for a mile. But that's his easy pace, okay? That's when his heart rate is relaxed and easy in that zone two, maybe, heart rate zone. So it's all individuals. So I would recommend that you get a heart rate monitor if you're really serious about this. I have a Garmin 400 630, haven't made a review yet, but stay tuned for that. And a heart rate monitor then. So by doing that, you're able to sort of more closely monitor your training intensities. And that's super important if you're serious about your training. Because rather than training like sort of somewhat hard most of the time, you want to train really easy most of the time. And then sometimes really hard. People typically don't train easy enough on their easy days and typically don't train hard enough on their hard days. So in order to sort of do that right and hit the right intensity at the right time, having a heart rate monitor might be a good idea. A couple of things at the end here from Mark Walsh, his question. He says that he struggles, he finds it impossible to stay within the zone two sometimes. And I don't know if I exactly understood the question right, but I know a lot of people include myself in the past, struggled to run easy enough on my easy days because it's just so slow unless you're very fit. Now that I'm getting fitter, I can head out for a fairly relatively speaking to my own previous fitness, fast pace, but it is easy for me now. So when I go out, I can hit zone one quite easily. I know what type of pace I need to do when I'm still running. Whereas in the beginning of my fitness journey, if I wanted to stay in zone one, I had to almost be walking. And so keep that in mind as a beginner, easy running might actually mean walking and you might have to walk on some of your runs. Certainly when you get to hills, it might be a good idea to walk. But if you're disciplined enough, and if you have the heart rate monitor and you know you got to stay below 130, just run as slow as you humanly can and eventually you will be able to get down to the correct heart rate. Run ridiculously slow. I've heard some people say that zone one, how do you know you're in zone one? You're in zone one when you feel embarrassed about how slow you're running. That's when you're in zone one. So you've got to sort of be able to tolerate that, run as slow as possible sometimes to be in zone one. But typically most of your runs should be in zone two and that is a sort of slow but normal running pace. But again, it really depends on your fitness. He also says that he'll go for 10 miler easy and then after a while he speeds up because he feels as if he'd never finish if he doesn't speed up. And that's sort of I know what you mean by that. It's very typical to speed up on the second half of a run and that's normal and actually could be quite a good idea in training. But it really depends on your goal of that particular session whether or not you want to speed up. But a slight speeding up is fine. If you find yourself going with outside of the easy zone though, Marc, and you feel like you'd never finish, I think that has more to do with maybe your schedule. Because I find if I have a lot to do one day and I'm out for a longer run, I might get stressed that like, oh, time, you know, it takes so much time because it does take time. If you want to go run really slow, it takes more time obviously. And sometimes it's tempting to just run a little faster just to get it over with because then I can get on with my day. But that's why I sort of make a point for myself out of trying my best to have to set aside the amount of time that I actually need for a run, so that I know that, you know what, I have the time I've set aside the time I'm going to go for this run and it's going to be easy. And one of my tricks actually is listening to podcasts. If I have a podcast and I know the podcast is about the length of the run that I'm planning to do, then I know that, you know, if I finish faster, I won't be able to hear the last 10 minutes of the podcast and that sucks. So I'll just relax, I'll listen to my podcast and I'll just sort of go along really easily. So that might be a trick you might want to try out. All right, guys, that's all for today. Keep it easy, keep most of your running easy, and just accumulate time at that aerobic pace. Over time, you'll get more and more and more time, volume per week, you'll build over the years, steadily increasing if that's what you want, and you'll get better and better and better, even though most of your running is easy. Of course, you need still to have some hardware running in there as well, but that's a topic for another video. Anyway, thanks Mark for your question. If anyone else has a question, you can always post a comment or send me a message even at the LoneTrail Facebook page and I'll add it to my list of potential future video topics. Thanks for watching, bye now.