How to determine you’re running at an easy pace

How to determine you’re running at an easy pace

In his Comrades Marathon training programmes, Coach Parry talks about an easy pace. Are you unsure of what this is? On this episode of the Ask Coach Parry podcast, Lindsey tells you how to determine what this pace is for your programme.

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Welcome onto this edition of the Ask Coach Parry podcast, Lindsey Parry is with us once again, I’m Brad Brown. Lindsey, today’s question comes in from Ndlele Mtembeni. Ndlele wanted to know, how do I judge my easy runs pace? Obviously on your training programmes for Comrades you talk about running easy and one person’s easy is another person’s tough. How do you get that balance right?

Lindsey Parry: On the programme itself I get that balance right by using a relative intensity based on what you’re capable of running. In other words, if you’ve chosen the correct programme to follow, based on the times that you are currently running in time trials and races of 21km etc, then those paces that I give, if you stick within that band, that will be easy running.

Don’t have a HR monitor? Do the talk test

If you, of course, don’t have access to Garmin technology, which may well be the reason why you’re asking this question, in other words you don’t know what speed you’re running cause you don’t have a device that tells you that easily. Then we used the talk test.

If you can run along and hold a full-on conversation, a little bit out of breath, but hardly, and you can laugh and talk loudly and you don’t have to take breaks, so some people, I’ll hear it all the time. They’ll talk, talk, talk, then they have to just take a pause in the conversation, breathe, breathe, breathe, then carry on talking. That’s not talking pace. That means that you’re running a little bit harder than what’s considered easy and you need to slow down a bit.

So robust conversation when you can shout at each other, laugh and think about just about anything except running, then you’re probably running easy. If you’re running on your own, people will look at you funny, but talk to yourself and see if you’re capable of holding a conversation.

BB: Hey, some of us talk to ourselves when we run anyway Lindsey, that’s par for the course, that’s normal. Ndlele, thank you so much for your question today. Much appreciated and Lindsey, thank you for your time. We’re back again in a couple of days, until then, from the two of us, it’s cheers.

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