50k per week is kind of a lot. I’m assuming you were training for something specific and were therefore on top of it, but that amount of work could definitely negatively effect your cognitive ability if you weren’t getting enough calories/protein/water/sodium to replenish what you were losing.
“Running” starts at about 10km/h: say 5 hours spread over a week is not a lot. Walking is about 5 km/h, jogging is in-between. Average pace is something near 10 km/h for Strava users aged 20 to 49: https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness-exercise/average-r...
It is more about the metabolic situation that you put your body in vs an explicit pace.
Elite runners can easily be in fully aerobic zones at 4 min/km paces, while unfit runners could be getting into anaerobic zones at double that.
I’m not sure why but “jogging” is a term that isn’t commonly used these days. Perhaps it is because one person’s easy run can be pretty fast while another’s full out run (beyond 500m or so) can look like jogging.
I wasn't so much that cognitive ability was lower. It just wasn't any different. Basically, no observable impact on anything, positive or negative from this 18-month experiment.
I built up to that over a few months. Basically, three 10Ks during the week + 20K on the weekend. I was using the Maffetone approach so none of these runs were taxing.
