TRAINING HARD IS the most widely-accepted way to improve performance legally, but training easy is no less important.That’s the message from Athletics Ireland national endurance coach Steven Macklin who makes the argument that it’s often the case where people train too hard on ‘easy’ days and not hard enough on the ‘hard’ days.Macklin, during an interview with The42, explains that easy runs are highly-specific to the individual and as well as various other workouts, be it tempo runs, hill repeats or sprints, they’ve just as important a role to play.

“An easy run should be done on the 1-2 days following any intense exercise or race,” explains Macklin.

“It should also form a big part of your early-season training when building fitness before adding intensity.

“It will stay in a training program year-round but will have less of an emphasis as you move from general training to the specific training.

“Also, any time you’re feeling very fatigued/tired it’s always a good choice to run easy and not do anything more intense.”

Getting the pace right for an easy run isn’t so simple, however.

“This is highly dependent on the individual runner’s profile; the amount of time they’ve been running, their race distance, their injury history, the lifestyle balance with time available to train and how well they can recover.

“But as a general rule; keep your easy days easy and keep your specific days a little tougher.”

Complete rest, he argues, is not as beneficial as getting out for a light run but often, the barrier to easy runs is mental, as opposed to anything physical.

“An easy run is used as a stimulus to improve your aerobic fitness.

“As a distance runner, you must get used to spending time on your feet and depending on your target race distance the run may need to be longer.

“In scientific terms, easy runs teach our bodies to utilize fats better as a fuel source, they increase mitochondria, aerobic enzymes, capillary density and myoglobin, all of which have a positive impact on your running.

“Easy runs also promote oxygen delivery to the muscles and can act as a great recovery tool.

“However, when running easy our bio-mechanics can break down a little due to the slow pace, so adding some relaxed strides during or afterwards over 100m can help reinforce good patterns of movement.

“Consistency and patience is the key to endurance running success, there are no quick fixes.”

This new free fitness app will help change the way you train and look

‘I’ve ridden up the Hill of Tara 65 times non-stop on a mountain bike’