A recovery run is important as it prevents injury and helps you improve your pace.

Speed workouts and long runs are the exciting part of training for a race. However, not every run can be fast or long! Slow runs have their place in training also. One of the most common mistakes runners make is running too fast all the time. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, if you want to run faster, sometimes you have to run slow – such as on recovery runs.

What are recovery runs?

Recovery runs are easy runs that you do at a very light, controlled effort. Typically, you do these runs when your legs are tired from previous training, but you want to get in more mileage for the week. Recovery runs are aerobically easy enough not to elicit any muscle damage or need for extra recovery. 

Contrary to popular misconception, recovery runs do not flush out lactic acid. Lactic acid typically clears shortly after a hard workout. However, a recovery run will pump oxygen-rich blood into damaged muscles. This is why you usually feel better after doing a recovery run! 

Since the goal of a recovery run is adding mileage without prolonging recovery, you want to cap recovery runs at approximately 60 minutes in duration. 

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