Am I running too fast?

Say a full sentence out loud while you run. If you can’t — if it comes out in three-word bursts with a breath between each — you are running too fast. That is the whole test, and you can do it on your next run without any equipment.

Almost every new runner fails it. That is not a fitness problem, and it is worth being clear about why.

Why everyone starts too fast

Nobody has an intuition for easy running, because nothing in ordinary life calls for it. You have an intuition for walking, and an intuition for running-for-a-bus. Easy running sits between those, and it feels wrong at first — slow enough to be embarrassing, in a way that has nothing to do with how anyone else is running.

So people default to the only running they know, which is the running-for-a-bus kind, and then conclude after four minutes that running is horrible and they must be unfit.

They are usually neither. They are just going far too fast for the thing they are trying to do.

What easy actually feels like

• You can hold a conversation, in sentences, without planning your breaths around them.
• Your breathing is noticeably deeper than at rest but has a rhythm you could keep.
• You could go a bit further if you had to. Not much further — but the thought isn’t absurd.
• You finish the session thinking you could have done a little more. That is a well-judged easy run.

If you finish an easy run feeling like you emptied yourself, the run did less for you than a slower one would have, and it cost more to recover from.

How slow is slow enough?

Slower than you expect. For most people starting out, easy pace is considerably slower than the pace they instinctively set off at — often by more than they would believe before trying it. Use the sentence test rather than a target pace: it adjusts itself for hills, heat and tiredness in a way a number cannot.

Don’t chase a number at this stage — chase the sentence test, which adapts to hills, heat, tiredness and altitude automatically in a way a fixed pace never will. Once you have a race result to work from, the numbers become genuinely useful, and the pace calculator will give you a set of training paces from it.

The part that takes some believing

Running slowly is not the beginner version of running properly. It is also the majority of what experienced runners do, including people running marathons far quicker than most of us ever will. The specific proportions you see quoted come from studies of elite endurance athletes, and are not a target for someone in their first month.

The easy running builds the engine. The hard running, when it eventually arrives, sharpens it. Doing everything at a moderate, slightly-uncomfortable middle pace is the one approach that reliably builds neither.

So: slow down. It is not a compromise, it is the method.