Why your easy runs need to be truly easy
Most women run their easy runs too fast. It undermines recovery, raises injury risk, and stalls progress.
3 min read · Runya coaching team
The most common training mistake in women runners: running easy sessions too hard.
Easy runs should be genuinely easy — conversational pace, where you could hold a full sentence without gasping. Most women run them at a pace where speaking is possible but uncomfortable.
Why this matters: Easy runs done correctly build your aerobic base without stressing your system. Done too fast, they create cumulative fatigue that:
- Slows recovery between sessions
- Raises injury risk
- Makes hard sessions feel harder than they should
- Plateaus your progress
The test: Can you say "I am running at a comfortable easy pace" without pausing for breath mid-sentence? If not, slow down. Even if it feels embarrassingly slow.
For women 40+, this is even more critical: Recovery takes longer than it did at 30. If you're not recovering fully between sessions, you're not adapting — you're accumulating fatigue.
The 80/20 rule: Research consistently shows elite endurance athletes do 80% of training at easy effort and 20% at hard effort. Most recreational runners do the reverse — and wonder why they're always tired and not improving.
Easy running isn't lazy running. It's the foundation everything else is built on.