If you spend a few minutes on social media following running accounts, you should be well aware of the benefits of “easy runs”.

But sometimes doing 80% of your running at this easy pace can be boring. As a coach I feel like a bit of a fraud if I’m putting in 3-4 easy runs each week. Yes It’s important, but some variation can make the training far more exciting, and after all, we do this for fun right?

So that’s where a session like this comes in. It breaks down the 60 minutes nicely and gets you thinking about different paces. I find when I do this session myself my RPE still remains very low. After all, 20 minutes at marathon pace is not exactly a big ask.

But when I find myself doing this training session and moving through the paces, I feel like I concentrate more of my technique and running form. To keep the effort level low, whilst picking up the pace, requires me to run with good form.

So rather than just head out for 60 minutes easy, being lazy with my focus, I find this brings many more benefits and helps me as a runner.

That’s not to say we need to replace all easy runs with these type of runs, far from it, but they can help mix things up. As a Coach I tend to use these sessions for my stronger runners who have more variation between their easy paces and marathon pace.

If you’re relatively new to running, it’s likely your easy pace and marathon pace will be very similar, so a session like this isn’t really necessary.

I hope you enjoy the session, keep working on good running form and try and ensure that RPE doesn’t creep any higher than 5/10.