Today November 12, 2013 marks the first day of me slowing down even more than I have in the past. After taking three weeks off from my last Marathon, one week entirely, one week of biking, and then one week of biking with running alternating days, I have learned what it what feels like to have fresh legs. Running with fresh legs allows you to run harder on your harder days. In my previous training my easy days consisted of running at my aerobics heart rate. This heart rate was around 147 BPM. This kept my pace around 9:15 to 9:30 give or take a few seconds. While this may seem slow compared to my half marathon pace of 7:40 and my marathon pace of a 8:57 mile, it is actually fast. Ryan Hall runs his easy runs at a 7:30 minute pace which is over two minutes faster than his marathon pace of 4:50. So he’s running an easy 2 1/2 minutes slower on his rest or recovery days for easy runs then his goal marathon pace. This would put my recovery runs at approximate 11 a half minute to 12 minute pace. In the whole scheme of things by slowing down one and a half to two even two and half minutes a one hour run will only be approximately 1 mile less than it would be had I been running faster. If I were to do three of these runs per week it only equates to three at the most 4 miles less. This could easily be made up by running a few minutes longer each day. The point of the matter, is I’ll still be able to maintain higher mileage yet getting more rest for my legs. There is definitely a difference of feeling rested after a run this slow versus two minutes faster per mile.