I’ve been running ultra marathons for 6 years and during this time, I have hardly ever done a speed workout. The majority of my training is made up of easy miles. Runner’s World calls these, the other miles, “not the tempos or track repeats or long runs”. Despite the lack of tempo runs, I’ve been getting faster. I ran my fastest 6 hour race in 2020, completing 65 km.
As a busy parent with a full time job, I like to keep things simple with my training. I run at a manageable pace for one hour, four out of five days during the week. I do my long runs exclusively on the weekend, and these runs typically range from 1.5 – 4 hours in length.
I recently did some research to support my training method of running mostly easy miles. I found that there’s an abundance of material which supports a large volume of easy running.
David Roche is a well-known ultra running coach. He was the 2014 USA Track and Field trail runner of the year and he regularly appears on the Ginger Runner Live podcast. He and his wife Megan co-authored the Happy Runner, a runner’s manual for healthy and happy training, in 2019. Roche shares his thoughts on ultra marathon training plans in an excellent 2017 article from Trail Runner magazine. His top piece of advice is to build a base before attempting longer distances. This base is built from easy, moderate length runs.
“Most runs should be easy and not too long—between 30 and 90 minutes depending on your background. Then, after you have a base, start doing weekly long runs as you would for marathon training.”
I should point out that Roche recommends at least one speed workout per week. I think that my running would benefit from a tempo or track run and I might still try them out. That being said, I won’t be overly concerned if I miss a speed workout. I’m happy with the progress that I’ve made with current training method of mostly easy miles.
