How Fast Should Your Easy Runs Be Compared to Your Marathon and 5K Pace?

Easy runs are supposed to be EASY

Too many of us are flexing on Strava for having fast recovery days. You guys should know better.

Easy days are meant to be stupidly slow and chill. That’s where the gains are made.

So what exactly is an easy run?

It might be different for everyone. My easy day after a hard day is different than my easy day after a day off.

easy runs need to be easy

I wrote this post about Zone 2 running, and you should check it out here.

How do you know if you’re running your easy pace at the right effort level If you can talk in full sentences, your easy pace is where it needs to be!

Now, we’re here to talk about the gap between your easy pace and your marathon pace and your 5k race pace. So let’s get into that.

What Kind of Gap Should You Have?

When you are properly trained and fit, the rough estimate is to lop off 45-90 seconds from your easy run pace to find your marathon pace.

That’s not always the case, but it’s a good guideline. You might be training a little too fast for what you should be, or you aren’t ready for the best marathon you can run.

If you train at a 10-minute mile pace? Your goal marathon effort might be between 8:30 and 9:15, depending on training.

As you can see with my pacing calculator (I built the calculator and it’s part of every athlete’s training log), you can see that Easy pace is 10:00 and marathon race pace is 9:12 [48 seconds difference between suggested training pace and marathon race pace].

Again, this is all a rough guide, and there’s always going to be exceptions.

What you don’t want to do is shoot for a crazy fast marathon time and then justify training too hard to get in the 45-90 second window.

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5k Race to Easy Pace Gap

Because the 5k is pretty darn intense, the gap should be a lot wider. Most say that 90-150 seconds per mile is the generally accepted gap between easy pace and 5k race pace.

When I recently ran a 17:30 5k [5:39 pace], training calculators suggested that my training pace is 7:30.

There’s no way I was running that fast during training - my typical pace is closer to 8:10. What that means is that you can have an even wider gap and still hit your racing times.

The easy runs we do support the workouts we are hitting, not the other way around.

Common Mistakes I See

You’re not running slow, but you’re also not running fast. You’re in this middle blah-zone where you’re not recovering, but you’re not gaining any fitness. It’s not fast enough for threshold training and too fast for regeneration.

This middle zone might look better on Strava than a true easy/recovery run, but it’s not really serving your running. If I were coaching you, I would say slow down your runs so they were truly recovery pace so you can make your workout and long run days harder.

Here’s a quick example for you:

If runner A ran 3 miles at 7 min pace day after day and had to stop because they were gassed and runner B ran 8 min pace but was able to run 5 miles at that pace for every run they do, runner B is going to have run more miles and ultimately have bigger engine over time. Chances are, they’ll be healthier and have the ability to push their long runs and workouts where they’ll get most of their fitness gains.

Do you have questions about what pace you should be running? Send me a message and I’ll help you figure it out!

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