Toxic Miles

As you probably know from How Often To Run, I do not believe short, easy runs are generally beneficial. There is a place for Recovery Runs, but only when you are recovering from Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness or injury.

I believe that if a run is too short to build endurance, to slow to build aerobic or anaerobic capacity, not hilly enough to build eccentric resistance, then it is toxic. These Toxic Miles do nothing but slow up the recovery from our quality runs, which reduces the intensity we can do these quality runs and make us more injury prone. Some people call these 'junk miles' as they are worthless. I prefer the stronger term, 'Toxic Miles', because I believe that they have a negative impact on our training. You can be a successful runner while putting in a lot of Toxic Miles, but they make success much harder to achieve.