by Larry Eder
This is Friday, April 5, 2024.
This is a recovery day.
Your workout for today:
Warm-up slowly,
40-60 minutes, easy running,
6 x 150-meter stride-outs, with vigor,
cooldown,
hydrate,
get off wet clothes,
recover,
Larry’s Deep Thoughts: Recover today so you can race tomorrow.
Easy days are genuinely part of your training regimen. Run hard on the tough days, but follow the coaches’ plan. Run easy on the easy days. Train smart. Your body will handle the stress much better.
In my senior year of college. I had trained hard over the winter and could not understand why my first few races were either way off or behind. I was overtrained. So, I cut my mileage and went down to 30 minutes of easy running between hard days. I also did a six-week period where I did the 10k drill by Coach Dellinger on Tuesdays (25 laps, start with 200m race, pace 200m at 6-minute mile pace, then, 400m race pace, 400m in 90, then, 800m at race, 400m in 90), and Thursdays for 5k drill (12.5 laps, 200m race, 200m 45-sec pace ), with racing on weekends. Sure enough, in 3 weeks, I was back and ran PBs at 2 miles, 5k, 5,000m, 10,000m, and six miles. The season ended in a six-mile race, where I improved 2 minutes from the year before. I was a hard-easy convert.
