Getting better is mostly a question of what you do on the easy days
Training is not a collection of hard sessions. It is a structure — and the structure is considerably less demanding, and considerably more patient, than most people assume.
If you are still deciding whether running is for you, start with Start Running instead. This section assumes you already run and want to run better.
Most of your running should be easy
Not some of it. Most of it — at an effort you could hold a conversation through. The principle is that easy running is aerobically productive and cheap to recover from; the familiar four-fifths figure is how that principle is usually expressed.
Eighty–twenty is a widely used starting ratio, not a target to hit precisely. Runners training three hours a week and runners training ten do not need the same split, and neither figure tells you anything about which sessions should be hard. Use it to notice that your easy runs are not easy — that is what it is good for.
The common failure is not running too little. It is running every session at a moderate, slightly-uncomfortable middle pace — hard enough to need recovery, easy enough to build very little.
Three layers, in this order
Principles
Why training is shaped the way it is. Read these once and most plans stop looking arbitrary.
Workouts
The handful of session types every plan is built from, and what each is actually for.
Plans
Those workouts arranged over weeks. Before the plans themselves, the decisions that make one work.
The sessions, side by side
| Session | What it develops | How it should feel | A common frequency |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy run | Build aerobic base and recover | Conversational | Most of the week |
| Long run | Extend how long you can hold effort | Conversational, then honest | Once a week |
| Tempo | Raise the effort you can sustain | Comfortably hard | Once a week, in a block |
| Intervals | Sharpen speed and running economy | Hard, in repeats | Once a week, later in a block |
| Hills | Strength and form, at low impact | Hard, briefly | A useful substitute for intervals |
Read in any order
Principles first is the fastest route, but nothing here depends on what came before it.
