A: This is an important question that even experienced runners get wrong. Easy effort runs are restorative efforts after hard working days or while you’re building up your fitness. Trying too hard on an easy effort run will only reduce your ability to run well in a future workout or race day and/or potentially lead to injury. Easy run days should be run at an easy effort - NOT a specific pace. You have to be very honest with yourself, listen to your body, and run with very little or true “easy” effort. This doesn’t mean that easy runs can’t feel hard, in fact, that opposite is often true: recovery runs the day or two after a workout can feel really hard on the body -while- the effort is truly easy. For me, depending on my training, recovery, sleep, stress levels, etc. leading up to an easy run day - my pace can be anywhere between a 9:15 mile down to a 7:30 mile. Most days easy runs settle in around 8-8:30 mile