Social Running vs. Quality Workouts: How you have your fun and get fast & fit too
The Importance of the Social Run
I used to be a lone wolf when it came to training. For no good reason, I was pretty timid when it came to getting out and running with a group. I didn't think it would be for me. Then one day, I got brave enough to go and check out my local run group, the North End Runners. After my first run with them, I was hooked. It was so much fun. It still took me a little bit to come out of my shell, but five years in, I rarely miss a Wednesday.
The regular crew run recharges my soul every week with an influx of positive vibes and conversation. It's refreshing that I can get to know such a diverse group of people, and the topic of what you do for a living rarely comes up. It's not for everyone, but there is something special when a group of like-minded people come together and share a run.
I also regularly work family time into my social running on the weekend. This is a great way to get out and share some quality time. Amanda and I often spend our Sundays together trail running, and it is so much fun.
When you get into the whole social run scene, it doesn't take long before your calendar can fill up pretty quick. Wednesday runs, track night Tuesday, Thursday trail, weekend long runs, and family time runs. When you pack your schedule with all these fun activities, you very quickly begin having little time actually to run at a pace that is beneficial training.
The key to progressing as a runner is to make sure you are doing most of (65-70%) your running easy, and the rest of it will make up your quality workout days and long runs. When you put the right amount of effort into each specific type of run, you will apply just the right amount of stress to cause adaptations in your body allowing you to get faster and run further, while allowing your body enough time to recover and to absorb the training. When things get out of balance on either side of the equation, be it too much easy running, too little hard running or too much running in the middle, runners will find they get injured more frequently and plateau with their progress.
Quality Running Workouts
Quality workouts are runs that have a specific purpose other than your typical easy endurance running. These are your V02 max, threshold, and long-run days. Depending on your weekly mileage and experience, you should have 2-3 quality workouts per week. If you are just getting into this, it should probably be one workout day during the week, and one longer run on the weekend. Quality runs are essential to make improvements as a runner and need to be run at a particular effort level to achieve the adaptations you are looking to get from the workout.
Working out in a group setting to do your hard workouts, such as intervals or threshold runs, is very beneficial. So long as you are doing what you are supposed to and not just blindly following what others are doing. The group setting is great to have friends to share in the suffering and push you through the hard intervals. This is why I started the Tuesday and Thursday morning workout days. These mornings on the commons are a safe space where everyone can come and be social for the warm-up and then can do their own thing for the workout portion. The great thing about being on the commons is that you are never far away from a group member. There is always someone close for a high five or for cheering you on even though you are not running side by side or even running the same workout. This early morning community of runners is a collaboration of runners of all levels coming together to push their limits. It works well as the more experienced runners help the new runners, and everyone has something to gain from being in the group. The support is there, but this is not a social only a social run, it is a quality workout day.
Easy Running
For the majority of people, I would say that group social run pace is harder than what an easy run would be considered. The typical person in a group run setting tends to run faster than they probably should to try and keep up with the group.
If you are running slower than you typically should, this is not a bad problem to have. I will typically tack on some extra miles to the group run and sometimes add some light speed work to make sure that I am getting the right training stimulus in. The bigger problem, however, is when you are working a group social run into your schedule and calling it an easy run. But when you break it down, you are running faster than your marathon race pace (or in some cases 1/2 marathon or even 10k race pace). This is no longer an easy run, and if you are serious about your training (OR YOU WANT TO GET FITTER WITHOUT GETTING INJURED), you shouldn't kid yourself into thinking that it is one.
First, you need to figure out where you fall in the pace spectrum and figure out what your "easy pace" should be. This is pretty easy to do if you use a simple tool like the Macmillan running calculator https://www.mcmillanrunning.com. With this tool, you can enter in your best time from a running race, and it will extrapolate a bunch of predicted paces for other distances.
Your easy pace should be around 1 min/km slower than your marathon pace, which you can find in this chart. So if your marathon race pace is around 4:12/km so this means an easy running pace of 5:12/km. This works out ok with an average group running pace in the 5:20-5:30 min/km.
But let's say you are not a sub - 3hr marathon runner and you are a 4 hr marathon runner according to your pace chart your marathon race pace is around 5:45/km so your easy pace should be around 6:45/km. Now, this is not an exact science, and as the paces get slower, there is a bit more wiggle room in what your easy pace should be compared to your predicted marathon race pace just because you don't have the long-distance endurance build-up to make the paces at longer distances accurate. So, in this case, its ok if you feel comfortable to take that 6:45/km pace down to 6:20-6:30/km pace.
The critical take away here is that we need to establish what your easy run pace should be so we can understand the impact different runs have on our body.
Looking at the numbers we just discussed, do you think you are running a social run at your easy pace? My experience shows that almost no one in the social run is running easy. If I had my way, I'd like to be a part of the conversation that starts to educate people on what it means to run easy. This is a pretty big point for me and one that is very import for runners to understand to progress in the sport without getting injured. For now, if you would like to read more on this topic, I recommend that you start with this article: https://trailrunnermag.com/training/its-okay-to-run-slow-really.html .
One of my biggest pet peeves's as a coach is when I hear people saying they are out for an easy run when they are running faster than their marathon race pace. Know what you are doing and plan your week accordingly, so you keep progressing as a runner and don't end up injured.
When a group of friends gets together to do a long run, the pace often creeps up. Typically only one person in the group (or sometimes no one) will be running near the pace they should while the rest of the group is either running too fast or too slow because no understands what pace they need to be running for it to be a beneficial run. Both of these situations are not good for your training. It is ok, or even very helpful, to have training partners who are close to you in pace (15-20 sec/km or so), and you can share these types of workouts.
Working the Run Group Into Your Training
Take charge of your training and give each run a purpose and stick to it even in social settings. Keep your hard days hard and your easy days easy. You are making sure that you only have 2-3 quality workouts in the run of a week.
Now that you know what your easy pace is and you know that your typical social run is faster than what your easy pace is, what do you do? You have a few options, all with some pros and cons:
Talk with your friends and explain to them that you would like to run slower, they will probably be happy to slow down with you. This is preferable if you are finding that the group pace is pretty close to your marathon pace. You will not get any fitness gains or adaptations running at this pace.
Take it for what it is. Realize that the group run is a harder run. Schedule it as a hard day in your week. If you find the group run is hard enough on its own, then make sure you slow down your runs for the rest of the week to an easier pace. If you are in a place where the run on its own borderline hard, then treat it as a warm-up and hit some intervals post group run.
This run feels very hard for you to keep up. Make this a "threshold" workout. When you look at your pace chart, and you see that the average group pace is close to your 10k race pace, it can be an excellent workout for you. The stoplights and stop signs will naturally break it up into intervals for you. So you can embrace the suffer and run hard to keep up.
What is in common with all three of these options? You are thinking about what is the purpose of the run. And you are making a deliberate choice and understand how that choice fits into your overall training plan. Understanding this, you now should know that if you chose option 2 or 3 that you should not be running a hard workout day before or after your social workout run. This will overstress your body, and you will likely get injured.
Social Runs are fantastic! Now that you are empowered with some knowledge about pacing, you can better structure your week around them.
If you are looking for a running group, where you can get support and encouragement and help navigating these challenges, we have one for you. Join the New Leaf Running Club today!