One of the struggles new runner have is quickly getting winded and uncomfortable. They tend to start out too fast. This quickly leads to frustration, discouragement and not enjoying the run. So let’s avoid this with your training and discuss pacing. 

Your training right now is developing the cardiovascular and musculoskeletal capacity to run, it’s important to choose a pace that is comfortable and minimizes your risk of injury.  That pace you’re looking for is called, easy.

You will hear the term Pace thrown around with experienced runners.  This is generally how many minutes it take to run a kilometer or miles. Rarely we discuss speed in the terms of kilometers per hour. 

You will also hear the term Easy Effort. It means the same thing as Easy Pace but this may be more accurate as you are running by feel rather than speed. 

What does Easy Pace (or Effort) mean?  

• It means you should be able to carry on a conversation with the person you might be running with without being out of breath.  
• On a Relative Percieved Effort (RPE) scale of 0 to 10, an easy run should feel like a 4 or 5.  
• You should feel like you could “run forever”

A lot of new runners are surprised at just how slow an easy pace might be for them. Even the elites do most of their training at an easy pace so don’t be afraid to slow it down.  Your ‘easy’ pace will get faster as your fitness improves.

When you’re starting out, you might feel like you get out of breath quickly.  That’s OK. It will take a bit of time for your heart and lungs to get trained to perform this new effort.  That’s part of the reason we incorporate walk breaks – to bring the effort back down to an easy pace.

The run/walk approach

We use the run/walk approach for our Learn To Run clinics because it gradually progresses individuals to continuous running while minimizing the risk of injury and maximizing the chances of success.

Here are a few of the many benefits to the run/walk method:

• Walking breaks gives our heart and lungs an opportunity to recovery and bring the intensity back down to ‘easy’.
• Walking changes the mechanics of our gait allowing us to distribute the work our body is doing over different muscle groups, tendons, and ligaments.  This reduces repetitive stress and muscle fatigue which can help prevent injury.
• Walk breaks gives our brain a chance to recuperate too.  When we break our run up into smaller manageable chunks, it becomes a little less mentally daunting to complete the run.

We’ll be providing recommended run/walk intervals each week during the clinic but you can progress more quickly or more slowly through the program, depending on how you feel.  Some people love the run/walk approach and stick with it long-term. They  choose a run/walk ratio that they enjoy and feels sustainable.  For others, the run/walk is just temporary to get them to the point of running continuously.  The choice is yours.

As always, if you have any questions about finding your easy pace or the run/walk intervals that might work best for you, shoot us an email.  That’s what we’re here for!