PX7 Training Method · 4 min read · 2026-04-18
Easy is an intensity, not a feeling
If your easy days feel like tempo, you aren't running easy. The PX7 Training Method defines easy as a precise range — seconds per kilometre if you train by pace, watts if you train by power — and asks you to trust the number.
Ask most recreational runners what "easy" means and you'll get an honest, imprecise answer: it's the pace that feels comfortable-ish. A little slower than tempo. A pace I could hold for an hour. The problem is that the pace satisfying "comfortable-ish" for most runners is too fast to be useful as easy running and too slow to be useful as anything else.
What easy is supposed to be
In the PX7 Training Method, easy is Z1 and Z2 — 60 to 87 percent of your threshold. For a 45-minute 10 K runner with a threshold pace of roughly 4:30/km, that's somewhere between 5:10 and 6:30 per kilometre. For a power-based athlete with a critical power of 280 W, it's roughly 170 to 245 W. Same zone, different units. For most runners hitting either zone honestly, the first reaction is disbelief. It feels absurdly slow.
That is the correct reaction. Easy is supposed to feel absurdly slow. It's supposed to feel like you could hold a conversation without breaking rhythm, like you're barely working, like you should probably be going faster. The whole point is that the target — the pace on your watch or the number on your power meter — is dictated by your physiology, not by your pride.
Why the payoff is invisible
The adaptations to low-intensity running are structural and slow. Mitochondrial density increases. Capillary beds grow. Fat oxidation becomes more efficient. Your heart's stroke volume rises. None of this is visible on the watch. None of it shows up in a single workout. And none of it happens at tempo effort — at tempo effort you're training a different, complementary system.
What this slow-drip aerobic work buys you is the capacity to handle and recover from hard training. The runners who improve year over year are the ones whose easy days are actually easy, because those easy days let them absorb threshold and VO₂max sessions without breaking. The runners who plateau are the ones who ran their easy days at 85 percent, blunted every hard session that followed, and never let the slow structural work happen.
The discipline problem
Running slow is a discipline, not a technique. The watch will argue with you. Your friends will drop you. On a good day the pace will feel insultingly unambitious. The only way to hold it is to trust the number.
PX7 Training makes the number concrete. When your assessment sets your threshold, every easy zone gets a precise target range — in seconds per kilometre if you train by pace, in watts if you train by power. Your session card for today tells you the window: not "easy", but "5:10–6:30/km" or "170–245 W". When you want to go harder, the app doesn't stop you — but you know exactly what you're trading.
A short test
On your next easy run, check that you can hold a full sentence without breaking rhythm at least once per kilometre. If you can, you're in the zone. If every sentence lands in clipped words between breaths, you're above it. The target is not comfort; it's conversation.
Written by Jørgen Larsen for PX7 Training.