Types of Running Workouts
A training plan is a small set of workout shapes, repeated and arranged so they build on each other. Each one gives your body a different stimulus, and your body answers in a different way. This guide describes each shape by what it is for, how long and how hard to run it and how it should feel, so the names on your calendar make sense, then shows how they fit together in a week. It is general training guidance.
Easy and recovery runs
Easy runs are most of a plan. The stimulus is time on your feet at low stress, and the response is a bigger, more durable aerobic engine, built without the cost of a hard day. Because they cost so little, easy runs are also how your volume grows and how you recover between the sessions that matter.
An easy run feels conversational. You can speak in full sentences, your breathing never turns to huffing, and it feels like a four or five out of ten. In a five-zone model that is zone 2. A recovery run is the same effort, usually shorter, after a hard day or a race. See the guides on easy and recovery runs and the talk test.
Long runs
The long run is the week's longest run, at an easy effort, and it teaches your body to keep going: the stimulus is time on your feet, and the response is the durability to hold form, fuel and effort late in a race. Measure it in time, not miles, and keep most of them, though not always all, at three hours or less. Faster work can fold into the end of one, as in a progression run, and it then counts as a hard session. See the guide on the long run.
Strides
Strides are short, smooth accelerations of 15 to 30 seconds, fast but relaxed, with a walk or jog between until you feel fresh. A newer runner runs them at about 90 percent effort, for 10 to 20 seconds. The stimulus is quick, forceful contact with the ground, and the response is legs that stay quick and running that gets more economical, with almost none of the cost of a hard workout. They go at the end of an easy run, or in a warm-up, and 4 to 8 is a usual dose. They do not count as a hard session. See the guide on strides.
Tempo and threshold runs
These live around "comfortably hard": the effort you could hold for about an hour in a race, where talking in full sentences stops being comfortable. The stimulus is time right at the edge of what you can sustain, and the response is that the edge moves up, so the same pace feels easier and lasts longer. A session is 15 to 30 minutes of work for most runners, run as one block or as cruise intervals, for example 3 x 10 minutes with 1 to 2 minutes of jogging between. It should feel controlled and hard, never like a race. See the guides on tempo and threshold runs and the lactate threshold.
Intervals
Interval workouts are hard reps with easy jogging between them, run at roughly 10K down to 5K effort. The stimulus is time near your top aerobic effort, where your body uses close to the most oxygen it can, and the jogs let you collect more of that time than one continuous effort would. The response is a higher ceiling and fast running that costs you less. Plan 10 to 20 minutes of hard running in total, in reps of 1 to 4 minutes, for example 6 x 3 minutes. A faster session should finish at 6 or 7 out of 10, not 9 or 10. See the guides on interval workouts and VO2 max.
Hill repeats
Hill repeats are hard efforts up a moderate slope, roughly 4 to 8 percent, with a jog or walk back down. The stimulus is strong, fast pushing off the ground with less impact than the same effort on the flat, and the response is leg power and speed work that is gentler on your body. Short reps of 30 to 60 seconds build power, and reps of 1 to 2 minutes work the aerobic system. Run them hard and tall, not as sprints, and walk down. For newer runners the first step is 15 to 30 second hill strides. See the guides on hill repeats and hill strides.
Fartlek, progressions and race-pace work
Fartlek ("speed play") is surges inside an easy run, picked by landmark, song or feel instead of by stopwatch. Pickups of 15 to 30 seconds work like strides, and surges of 45 seconds to a few minutes at a hard effort work like intervals, with a session you can adjust on the day. See the guide on fartlek.
A progression run starts easy and only gets faster, finishing at a strong, controlled effort and never all out. It gives you late-run work on tired legs and a rehearsal of fueling and gear. See the guide on progression runs.
Race-pace work is segments at your goal race pace, in pieces of 2 to 3 miles with short rest for a marathon or half marathon. It belongs in the last two months before the race, because its job is to make your fitness look like the race. See the guide on race-specific preparation.
How the shapes fit together
Almost all of a plan is easy running, with a small, well-placed dose of hard. At most two hard sessions a week plus a long run is the ceiling for most runners. Tempo, threshold, interval, hill repeat, fartlek surge, race-pace and fast-finish sessions all count as hard, and strides do not. Never put two hard days back to back, and surround each one with easy running, with about 48 hours between hard efforts.
The order matters too. Build a base of easy running first, add threshold work on top, and add intervals after that, because a fast jump in volume or intensity is what injures amateurs. Newer runners start with strides and add a short interval or fartlek session only after three to four weeks of comfortable strides. For how the sequence is built over a season, see the guides on periodization and polarized training.
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