Title: Balancing Mileage and Speed: The Importance of Easy Runs, Fueling, and Recovery in Running Performance

Okay, hi. I just come back from the gym. Very funny, as you can tell. But I wanted to answer this. So I think with increasing mileage, there’s a misconception that you won’t have as much energy to give in some of the faster workouts that you might have during the week, such as intervals, tempos, what have you. But the reality is in order to like, in order to balance both increasing mileage with still doing those speed sessions, you have to take your easy runs easy. And I know that you hear this all the time, but a lot of people fail to also add to the end of that sentence, take your easy runs easy so that you can push in those faster section. And what I’m saying like take easy runs easy. Like when in this video that this person commented on, I did a 50 mile week. I was taking my easy runs super easy. So the point that like I am able to like talk full sentences, I could like just do nose breathing like and just practice to sat throughout and like it has to be at a pace that like feels really comfortable for you. It like doesn’t feel straining on you because in reality that’s meant to be like a recovery. It’s meant to just like keep the legs ticking over. It’s not really meant to be like as hard of a run so that once you come to those interval sessions or tempo sessions during the week or at the weekend, you still have the energy to be able to do that.

Now, taking your easy runs easy is not the only thing that keeps you able to give a lot of energy in these speed sessions. We also have to take into account refueling and just fueling well. Also recovery. So like sleeping well, sleeping at least 7 to 8 hours a night. And I feel like I really truly saw massive difference in my training when I actually started to feel myself well. And I think with fueling, it can be a little bit awkward for people because it really depends on your relationship with food and like where that’s been over the years. And I also know that some people don’t love to eat before, right before or right after a run. But I’m of the opinion, especially if you are a female runner, a female athlete, that you should be eating before every single run, that you shouldn’t be doing runs fasted. So this is more so pertaining to like morning runs because I know some people will do evening runs after they’ve kind of like had a full day of eating, that doesn’t really work well for my stomach.

But I just think it’s so important to make sure that you are fueling your body and giving it the correct nutrients. And with carbohydrates as well. Carbohydrates are shown important and it’s actually the body’s preferred source of energy. Yeah, there’s a whole lot of science behind it.

I’ve done a couple of videos on think about this as well as just some podcast episodes. So if you wanna go and check that out, you can, but it’s 100% doable. I just think the have to find like where you might be going wrong if you don’t feel like you have the energy into like still push in speed sessions because I really important to be hitting these three pillars and I might be missing something, but this is just something that I feel really passionate about because I think that people who are able to run high mileage, like are just really taking serve themselves, really making sure that you’re eating well, recovering well, and just like taking their runs. They’re easy runs, as easy as they can. But that’s just my experience and my opinion and sort of what I’ve Learned over the years. I hope that this helps.