New runners always ask me if running is supposed to feel so hard. It can during harder sessions and in races, but for much of your training, it should feel comfortable. Even pleasant sometimes.
Years back, we worked with a marketing consultant who spent time talking with some of our athletes. She came back and told me something I didn't see coming. That we'd helped them enjoy running.
That surprised me.
Of course I want athletes to enjoy their training, but I don't write sessions with fun in mind. I write them to be effective.
So I asked a few of them why they said that.
They all said the same thing. The zones we set up for them slowed everything down. Their pace dropped, and the pounding dropped with it. Fewer aches. Less soreness. Runs that didn't leave them buggered for two days.
That's the mistake. Training too hard, too often.
Besides making running hurt more than it needs to, pushing yourself all the time also slows progress.
You end up stuck in the grey zone. Too hard to build your aerobic engine. Too slow to build any real speed. You put in lots of effort, but don't have much to show for it.
One of the biggest reasons is training with friends.
New runners love running with mates. So do I. It's more fun, and easier to stay motivated to actually show up bright and early or after a long day at work.
But it comes with a catch. Running with a friend or with a run club often means running their plan, not yours.
You do what they're doing without thinking. The chat gets harder to hold, and still you try to hang on. You end up running someone else's pace for the whole run.
Does this mean you should never run with friends or groups? Of course not. It's about intent.
Save the group runs for your hard days. That's where company helps most. Someone to chase. Someone to keep you honest when it's uncomfortable.
Easy days are different. Run them too hard, and every day starts to feel hard. You never fully recover from the harder sessions, so your body starts to break down instead of build up.
New runners assume speed comes from running fast. Push harder, run faster. Seems obvious.
But running performance isn't built that way. It's built on your aerobic base, the engine underneath everything else.
Do a lot of easy aerobic running, and your engine gets bigger. Your easy pace gets faster at the same easy effort. When your easy pace improves, your hard pace moves up with it.
You're not pulling your times down from the top. You're pushing them up from the bottom.
Keep your easy days easy. It controls the load, keeps the soreness down, and that's what actually makes running enjoyable.
