Running Slower or:
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Long Runs
Thanks to everyone that read my first post last week. Honestly, I didn’t really know what type of response I’d even receive — I just hoped a few people would read it — but I was blown away. Thank you.
While you’re here, in October, I’ll be running in the Chicago Marathon. It will be my second time running in that race, but more importantly, it will be my third marathon raising money for St. Jude. My initial goal is $5000, but I’m hoping to surpass that and go for even more. If you’d like to support the hospital, you can do so here.
In April 2018, I ran my third half marathon and set a personal record (PR) in the process. I ran the first 5k — 3.1 miles — at a 7:05 pace. Overall however, I ran those 13.1 miles at a 7:28 pace. Five miles in, I thought I would be in striking distance to finish with a sub-1:30:00 half marathon. I’ll never forget, late in the race, seeing the 1:35:00 pacer running by me, entirely too comfortable compared to how I felt in that moment. I finished strong enough, but it obviously could have been better.
In December of the same year, I finally conquered 26.2. The first 13.1 miles clocked in at 2:02 and change — a sub-9:30 mile pace — and I was feeling good. This being my first ever full marathon, I figured I could run what amounted to two half marathons back-to-back, with each “half marathon” pacing almost a half hour slower than the race I ran in April. It was slow enough, so I thought. I finished that race at 4:32:54 — an average mile of 10:07 per. I did it! I ran a marathon. But again, it could have gone better.
In the span of nine months, I ran my best ever half marathon and my first ever marathon.
The problem? I trained wrong and didn’t even know it.
I used to hate long runs1. I could always run three miles pretty easily. Heck I could even run five or six without too many issues. I would usually run after work. But training would begin and I’d get out there, seemingly always in the sweltering heat2, and deal with it. But hey, at least it wasn’t one of my 8+ mile-runs that I’d have on the weekend! The weekday runs didn’t bother me that much, all things considered.
But the long runs? The weekend runs? I would dread them in the days leading up. It would ruin my Friday night. And that’s not to mention, once I actually got going, I’d be outside for hours. “Well, if the game I want to watch is on at 11:00 am, that means I need to finish by 10:00 so I can cool down, which means leaving at 7:30, which means…” I hated it.
And that was just thinking about the run, not even the actual run itself!
I’d get out, and power through, but the entire run was the means to an end. I ran so I could get to the imaginary finish line. You know how coaches in sports so often talk about needing to enjoy The Process? Only then could you really enjoy the end results?
I hated The Process.
Now, I love it.
When I got back into running at the start of 20203, I did what I always did when I started working out again — aim for (at minimum) a three-mile run, at a ~9:00 per mile pace. I had done that very thing at the start of 2016, at one point being able to run in the 8:00-minute range for 3-5 mile stretches.
And after a couple of failed attempts in training for both the Lincoln half and full marathons over the years, I decided to give the half another go. In early January, a couple days before I would also start eating healthier, I signed up for the Lincoln Half Marathon. At this point, I was all in on changing how I looked and felt.
I also decided to download the Strava app4. Not only would it keep track of my cumulative miles over the days, weeks, and months, it would also allow me to track other areas of my running that would help me improve. One of which was my heart rate, though I wouldn’t really know or understand this for a bit longer.
My first on the app was exactly three miles, finishing in 26:19 — an 8:45 pace. My average heart rate was 171.
Earlier this month, I ran about 4.5 miles at an 8:56 pace. My average heart rate was 139. To be honest, I wish it had been a little lower.
In five half-marathons before I started running slower, here were my results:
2013 Heart of the Ozarks: 1:55:03
2016 Nebraska Marathon: 1:51:37
2018 Garmin Marathon: 1:37:53
2018 Nebraska Marathon: 1:46:15
2019 Nebraska Marathon: 1:51:48
I also ran two full marathons in this stretch:
2018 St. Jude Memphis Marathon: 4:24:41
2019 Chicago Marathon: 4:38:55
I was up and down. Good, but not great. But I didn’t really try my best to get better. That always showed itself with an immediate week off. Which would turn into two weeks, then three, and before I knew it, a month had gone by and I had barely been back out on the trail. Outside of 2018, I always found a reason or two to just kind of stop.
The long runs often did me in the most. During some training periods, especially for Chicago in 2019, I would outright skip them. Or at the very least, cut down the miles considerably, to the point where I wasn’t getting out of those runs what I should have.
I was genuinely enjoying the start of 20205. I worked out 3-5 times a week and was feeling healthier than I had in years. I’d run three or so miles on weekdays, followed by 7+ on Saturdays. I was happy out there. I pushed myself. It was working. And for whatever reason, it felt sustainable.
On February 10th, 2020, I began training for the 2020 Lincoln Half Marathon. After multiple years of going with Hal Higdon’s plans, I decided I’d rely on his training once again. Whereas in years past I often went with his intermediate plans, I decided to push myself a little harder. I chose his Advanced Half Marathon Training Plan, finally incorporating speed work and even some hills. Most importantly, I was about to start running slower than I ever had before, on purpose.
Prior to this batch of training, and for reasons I still don’t know today, I had rarely read any of the preamble to the actual day-to-day schedule he laid out. But this time, I did. Here’s what it said in the intro:
The runs on Mondays, Wednesdays and sometimes Fridays or Saturdays are designed to be done at a comfortable pace. Don’t worry about how fast you run these workouts. Run easy! If you’re training with a friend, the two of you should be able to hold a conversation. If you can’t do that, you’re running too fast. (For those wearing heart rate monitors, your target zone should be between 65 and 75 percent of your maximum pulse rate.)
65 to 75 percent? O… k? It’s not like I ran as fast as possible on my runs, but I pushed myself! Isn’t that what I was supposed to do?6 Not to mention, I didn’t know how was I going to run that slow. I was running sub-9:00 miles! Even my long runs!
I finished that first run of training — three miles at a 9:58 pace7 — and texted my girlfriend Riss afterwards. I essentially told her I didn’t think I could do this every time. It was genuinely something I needed to practice and get better at. And so that’s what I did.
You might be asking yourself, why does any of that matter? Why does running slow help you get faster? Long runs are hard enough. Training for a race is hard enough! And so when you are constantly running near capacity, or even in speeds that are comparable, you’re pushing your body too hard. You’re cutting down on your ability to recover. Not to mention, how are you supposed to do speed work, if you’re always running at a solid speed?
Throughout training for the 2018 marathon in Memphis, I just… ran. Three miles? Alright, deal. Six? Cool. Long runs? I guess I’ll dial it back a bit. I’d go out on a Saturday morning, no matter the distance, and aim for about 9:00 a mile. For my other training runs, I’d try to keep it near 8:00 or so.
I probably ran 95% of the miles in that training plan. I think I missed one or two long runs over those 18 weeks and maybe the same amount of weekday runs. I rested on rest days. I thought I was ready, and I was pretty excited to kick ass in my first ever marathon. But my body was being pushed to a level that was unsustainable.
At mile 17 in Memphis, I jumped over a storm drain. One of my calves immediately cramped up. By mile 19, the other calf was cramped up too. Those 9:02 miles I mentioned earlier? That pace turned into 11, 12, and even 13+ minutes, as I went back and forth between walking and an attempt at running.
Crossing the finish line wasn’t even a celebration. I was happy it was over.
In deciding to focus on my heart rate, I was able to make the biggest gains I’ve had in running in my adult life. On February 29th 2020, I ran a 5k in 22 minutes. It was my fastest time since high school, when I ran cross country. Perhaps that was the day everything clicked for me. When I realized that running slower wasn’t only good for me, but that it made me like running more. Most of my runs leading up to that were done at a ten-minute mile pace. Same with the ones in the days and weeks that followed. Yet here I was, running a 7:05 pace for 3.1 miles.
What started as an awkward, clunky way to run, quickly became the reason I fell in love with running. When I began training for the Lincoln half, I focused on getting my average heart rate close to 140 throughout my entire run. Instead of running five miles at a 9:00 pace, I ran five miles keeping my HR below a certain number, pace be damned.
When I did that, I aimed for 135. And then 130. And that summer, it usually meant I was running a ~10:00 pace. Sometimes, even slower. I had never purposefully run at a pace like this, but I also never felt better. Five miles over the course of 50 minutes originally seemed like a waste of time — weeks later, I would look forward to it.
Because as February of 2020 turned into March and April, life felt more alone. Restaurants and movie theaters were closed. Sports were suspended. Every day of work felt the same — wake up, work, read the terrible news, go to bed — and it’s not like weekends were a whole lot better.
In hindsight, I wonder if that’s actually why I liked running slower — it meant more time away from the real world. Time on the trail felt like its own bubble. Covid couldn’t find me here! I’m running away from it!
That sounds corny, but is it wrong?
In mid-March of 2020, I ran a 10k in under 45 minutes — a 7:13 pace — running my fastest mile and change at the end. What was happening to me?
In early April, I ran the first virtual race of my life, the Early Bird Run — ten miles at a 7:16 pace. I was running further and further, but barely losing anything off my time.
And on May 2nd, after almost two months of our lives being entirely upended, I ran the “Lincoln Half Marathon,” on my own trail, by myself. I finished in 1:35:56. I set a new PR.
Early in 2021, looking for a new way to train, I heard that the plan in 80/20 Running: Run Stronger and Race Faster by Training Slower by Matt Fitzgerald would help me a lot. Indeed it did.
Not only did it have some great plans for all sorts of races, it explained the science behind running slower. The exact way I ran in 2020? The reason why I no longer hated my Saturday morning run? It was in this book.
It taught me about the five heart rates zones, about why V̇O₂ max matters (and doesn’t matter), and showed the benefits, scientifically, to running slower. When I started running that way in 2020, I didn’t really understand why it was helping so much. This book answered that question. It’s like I had guessed the answers on the test, only to find out that I somehow got all of them right.
Today, I run about 80% of the time in my second heart rate zone8. A couple times a week, I’ll push myself a little harder and do something at a higher level. I definitely feel those runs in the hours after. But my “normal” runs? The runs I do almost every day, including long runs on Saturdays? I feel accomplished after, but I’m no longer miserable.
There was a time in my life when the Saturday runs were the reason I never wanted to run 26.2 miles ever again. A time when the Saturday runs kept me running one half marathon, at most, a year. And if a 12 mile run on Saturday turned into nine? Eh, no big deal. “I didn’t get enough sleep the night before, probably shouldn’t push myself!”
Saturday mornings are now among the best parts of my week. Outside of the occasional eight or nine milers, I’m usually on the trail for ten or more. And as I reach the halfway point of my marathon training sessions, I’m usually pushing 16+ on a Saturday morning. Even my half marathon plan features runs of 14 or 16 miles. It’s tough, especially when the weather’s pushing 80 degrees by 8:30 am. It changes my entire weekend, waking up before the sun rises. Friday nights are essentially a dead night for me.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
My low point as a runner — the 2019 Chicago marathon — saw me finish at 4:38:55. In 2020, running a “virtual” 26.2, I went 3:57:55, beating my goal of a sub-four hour marathon. In October of 2021, I ran the Twin Cities Marathon in 3:24:58. And the second half of the race was my fourth fastest half marathon ever. Later this year, I hope to chop off another ten minutes as I continue to set my sights on a sub-three hour 26.2.
At a certain point, I went past the point of wanting to lose weight, and entered a period of wanting to be as good as possible at running.
I’m still not satisfied.
Maybe I can’t be a truly great runner. But why can’t I be very good? Either way, I’ll run faster, by running slower.
Before 2020, I would have considered anything above eight miles a long run. Now I’d probably bump that number to 12.
Many of my races prior to 2020 took place in the late summer/early fall. Inevitably, this meant lots of summer training. And unlike now when I do the majority of my runs in the morning, most of my runs happened at night. Probably because I was younger and stayed up way too late.
Early in 2020, sick of how I looked and felt, I decided I wanted to lose some weight. I changed how I ate and started running again.
I honestly don’t remember the exact reason I downloaded it, but I assume my dad was a big reason why. He had really fallen in love with running in the decade prior, and it was a fun way to see how each other was doing out on the trail.
People forget about 2020.
Pushing yourself is good, but to do so on every single run is bad for your body.
And while I did run slow, my heart rate averaged 149, which I know was not 65-75% of what I could do. But at the time, I just didn’t think I could really run that much slower.
For me, this means 124-153 BPM. My first is anything 123 and under, third is 154-169, fourth is 170-184, and anything above that is my fifth.
Good word! Proud of you for being vulnerable and then showing what change will do for you! Keep running!
its kind of funny, I did the same thing with Hal's program for years, about 18 months ago I started using his app and stepped up like you did...then actually read what you are supposed to do for each workout, set a PR's in both full and half marathon. I cant believe it took my so long to pay attention...the app helped.