Q: Are Pfitz’s marathon plans too low on easy miles?

Here’s a random week from 18/85

• Mon: Recovery 6 miles AM/4 miles PM
• Tue: 10 miles w/4 @ LT
• Wed: 15 miles medium-long
• Thu: 6 miles recovery
• Fri: 13 miles medium-long
• Sat: 6 miles recovery
• Sun: 18 miles w/10 @ MP
• Total: 78 miles

I would like to hear everyone’s thoughts on how many of the above miles they would classify as “easy”. I acknowledge that “easy” is a spectrum not a specific pace. Let’s say it’s a relaxed but purposeful pace that varies from day to day based on feel.

If you do it as dictated in the book, medium long is 10-20% slower than MP, so I wouldn’t classify it as easy.

Recovery is slower than easy, so you could argue those don’t count as easy. We’ve had some good threads recently on easy vs recovery. The purpose of an easy run is aerobic development, while the main purpose of a recovery run is recovery.

This particular week doesn’t have any GA runs. But would you even classify GA as easy from a programming standpoint?

My math based on the sample week above:

• The LT workout has 6 miles of wu/cd, so let’s say those count as easy miles.

• Technically, he says you can run up to the first 5 miles of a long/MLR at an easy pace and then speed up for the rest of it so that you're no slower than 10% of MP. So, if each of the MLR/LRs have up to 5 miles of easy running as a warmup, that comes out to an additional 15 miles of easy miles.

• Adding those up, I’m counting 21 miles of easy running out of 78 total. That’s 27% easy.

• Even if I count the 22 miles of recovery runs as easy, that gives me 43 easy miles. 43/78 = 55%.

Is 10% slower than MP considered “easy”? How many easy miles would you count in this sample week?