Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow

I'm curious...is that pace really easy for you, like a nice recovery pace? It seems to be pretty much your pace much of the week and I just wonder what kind of exertion level that is in your case.

It's pretty easy, although I classify it as "moderate". It's not recovery, because I have nothing to recover from. I run whatever pace feels good. But when I'm doing low mileage, and I can run low-6 pace every day, and it feels great. When I go into marathon-specific training, bump the mileage over 70, start Big Workouts, start doubles, etc, then I really can't do that, so I make my easy days very easy (slower than 7/mile) and hard days very hard.

But right now I have no workouts or long runs or mileage to recover from, so I can cruise every day. It's working and easy at the same time.

Also, I'm really impatient, and don't like to spend lots of time running. If I can do 7 miles in under 45 minutes, that's less time out of my day wasted running.

Cool...interesting info, and it makes a lot of sense.

Kind of funny for me to read your 2nd comment because I'm in an opposite camp in that mind set, because I really enjoy spending as much time as possible out running. I often find myself trying to stay out running as long as possible using up every minute available to me that day. But I can understand your viewpoint from a training/mileage/efficiency viewpoint.

It's why I don't run trails much anymore. The pace is way too slow. Time running = time away from family. I view running as kind of a self-indulgent activity, so try to put a throttle on it. Running fast lets me train more without a corresponding hit in time.

I like how you keep running in its proper place in the priority chain. Like any hobby/activity it can definitely be done to an extreme to the detriment of other more important things if not kept in check.