How to Know If You’re Running Too Hard

Here's something I haven’t talked about on publicly yet: I just ran a marathon, and I am having to figure out how to run easy again.

My easy pace—the one that used to feel genuinely comfortable, conversational, sustainable—is currently sitting at 180 beats per minute and leaves me needing a nap. That's not easy. That's my body telling me something has shifted and I haven't caught up to it yet. Post-marathon recovery is its own education, and one of the main lessons is this: easy isn't a pace. It's a feeling. And that feeling will change on you more than once throughout your running life.

If you're a beginner and your easy runs don't feel easy, I want you to hear this clearly—you are probably not doing it wrong. You're just running too hard. And that's one of the most common and most fixable problems in running.

Why Most Beginners Run Too Hard

Nobody tells you to run too hard. It just happens, almost automatically, because we tend to associate effort with progress. If it's hard, it must be working. If it feels easy, it probably doesn't count.

And honestly? That instinct makes sense given everything we've been fed. Remember P90X? The era of "no excuses," "go hard or go home," workouts designed to leave you flat on the floor as proof that you'd actually done something? David Goggins? That messaging didn't go away—it just moved to Instagram and TikTok, where HIIT workouts get millions of views and the loudest fitness influencers are still out here telling you that if you're not gasping, you're not trying.

We have been conditioned—for decades—to believe that a workout only counts if it nearly breaks you. That rest is laziness. That easy effort is wasted effort. That the goal is always maximum output, every single time.

That is not how running works. And for most beginners, it's exactly what kills the habit before it ever gets the chance to stick.

When you go out too hard, every run becomes a sufferfest. You finish depleted instead of tired-in-a-good-way. Your body never gets the chance to actually adapt because it's too busy surviving. And after a few weeks of that, running starts to feel like something that's just not for you—when really it's just not at the right effort level yet.

The fix isn't running more. It's running smarter about how hard you're actually working.

What RPE Is and Why It Matters More Than Your Pace

RPE stands for Rate of Perceived Exertion—a fancy way of saying how hard does this actually feel on a scale from one to ten. It's one of the most useful tools in running precisely because it doesn't care about your pace, your watch, your fitness level, or what anyone else is doing.

RPE works because it's relative to you, right now, today. A pace that felt easy six months ago might feel hard today if you're stressed, under-slept, or under-fueled. A pace that felt impossible when you started might feel comfortable in eight weeks. The number on your watch doesn't account for any of that. RPE does.

For easy running—the kind that builds your aerobic base, teaches your body to adapt, and actually creates the fitness you're chasing—you want to be working at an RPE of about 3 to 4. Here's what that feels like in practice:

You could hold a full conversation. Not short answers, not gasping between words—a real, actual conversation about something other than how much you want to stop running. If someone called you mid-run, you could answer and they wouldn't know you were exercising.

It feels almost too easy. This is the part that trips people up. RPE 3-4 should feel like you could go longer if you had to. Like you're holding something back. That feeling is not wasted effort—that feeling is exactly the point.

You're not performing. You're not pushing. You're just running.

The Signs You're Going Too Hard

If you're not sure where your effort currently lands, here are some honest signals that you've crossed out of easy territory:

You can't get a full sentence out without pausing for breath. Single words, short phrases, a lot of nodding—that's not a conversational pace. Slow down.

You're dreading the next run before this one is even finished. When every run feels like a fight, your effort is too high. Easy running should leave you feeling like you did something good, not like you need to recover for two days.

Your easy runs and your hard runs feel basically the same. If everything feels hard, nothing is easy—and your body never gets the recovery it needs to actually get stronger.

You're exhausted in a way that doesn't feel like normal tired. Heavy legs for days, low energy, mood in the basement—these are signs your body is working harder than it can sustain.

Here's the Thing About Easy—It Shifts

This is what I'm living right now, post-marathon, and why I wanted to write this post in the first place.

What counts as easy changes. It changes as your fitness builds. It changes with your stress levels, your sleep, your fueling, your training load. It will change after a hard race. It will change when life gets heavy for a few weeks. The pace number will move around—sometimes in directions that feel discouraging—but the feeling stays the same.

Easy always feels like: I could talk. I could keep going. I'm working but I'm not fighting.

That's your north star. Not a number on your watch. Not what the runner next to you is doing. Not what your pace was three months ago. How does this feel, right now, today—and is it easy?

If the answer is no, slow down. It is not a step backward. It is the work.

What to Do With This

If you've been running too hard and wondering why it feels so unsustainable, you now have a simple recalibration: take your current easy pace and slow it down until you can actually talk. Do that for a few weeks. Notice what happens.

What will happen is that running starts to feel like something you can keep doing—because you can. Because you've finally given your body an effort level it can adapt to instead of just survive.

Every run in the Run Ready program is built around RPE 3-4—easy, sustainable, conversational effort. Because that's what actually builds a habit. That's what gets you to week four feeling stronger instead of burned out. If you want the full 4-week plan, it's waiting for you here.