Magness says the fastest kid sets the recovery pace, and that is the problem
The easy day is only easy for one runner on the team, and everyone else is chasing it.
Steve Magness says most runners run their recovery days too fast, and he points at high school teams as the clearest example of how it happens.
The mechanism is simple. The top kid leads the easy run. Everyone who is motivated and wants to get good latches on. That pace may be a genuine recovery pace for the fastest runner on the team. For the rest of the group it is just a moderate run with an easy day label on it.
"The top kid may be recovering. But most of the rest aren't," Magness wrote.
The top kid may be recovering. But most of the rest aren't.
His fix is a coaching one rather than a data one. Tell the kids it is okay to go slow on recovery days.
Why this lands for adult runners too
Swap the high school team for a group run, a club session or a training partner who is a few minutes faster over the marathon and the setup is identical. The pace that gets set is the pace the strongest person can absorb, and the social cost of dropping off the back is doing the work.
The word recovery is doing the work in Magness's post. A recovery day is defined by effort relative to the runner, not by a number on the watch that the group agreed on at the trailhead. Two runners side by side at the same pace can be having completely different days.
Note what Magness is not saying here. He is not prescribing a pace, a heart rate cap or a percentage. He has said before that almost no elite coach prescribes heart rate zones, and this post stays consistent with that. The instruction is permission, not a formula.
It is a small post with a specific audience, coaches of young runners. The transfer to anyone who runs easy days in a group is obvious enough that it does not need a study behind it.
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