My entire running career I was always baffled by teammates whom would pound our "easy days" with a 5:30 or lower pace. To be honest, I was even perplexed by the guys who would float around a sub-6 pace.

The way my team's training week was set up was workouts on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays (Note: sometimes we'd have races on Friday, or we'd do a short run if we had a Saturday race), recovery runs on Tuesdays and Thursdays, typically a race on Saturday, and then a long run on Sunday.

I always saw our workouts as races, putting as much energy as I could all the way throughout. When it came time for the recovery run, my pace per mile was always between 7 flat and 7:30. Running this slow on these days sometimes left I and a few select others in the dust behind the rest of team.

Runners are always some of the most competitive people I've ever met, so I understand why the pace may quicken and quicken throughout a regular nine mile run. I began to start noticing common themes as the season went on. A good portion of the guys pounding it on everyday became injured, they were always dissatisfied with their times, and they would never peak properly. While these themes didn't hold for everyone, they were still quite noticeable throughout some of them.

My first two years in college I was part of that group, and in those first two years, I was plagued by stress fractures. That's when I decided to just start taking it easy on those Tuesdays and Thursdays and try to optimize my recovery days. Not only did I stay healthier, but my times were significantly better and I became an integral part of my team's success.

The bottom line is we all want to go fast, but what's more important is when we choose to go fast. Our legs will thank us.