Really do take note of that final column, ‘minimum recovery time’. This is crucial to get the best out of your hard work, allowing yourself enough time to recover before the next hard session. There is a separate section later on all about recovery.

The other important thing to realise is that these intensities and RPE (rate of perceived exertion) is the same for everyone regardless of whether you’re a 35 minute 10k runner or a 60 minute 10k runner.

Easy is easy relative to YOUR current fitness and ability. Similarly, the only difference between the Vo2 interval pace of a 35 minute 10k runner and a 60 minute 10k runner is that one person will be capable of going much faster because of their current fitness. Both runners will be working ‘hard’ and to both it will feel like 8 out of 10 on the effort scale, but current fitness allows one to go much faster.

Below we will talk about the benefits of each training type, how they fit together to make up your entire running fitness and how best to proportionally carve up your training across the different intensities. We also provide a pace calculator that will give you the correct training paces for each intensity based on YOUR current fitness and ability.

Think of your entire running fitness as a bungalow. In simplistic terms you can break the bungalow down into three elements; the main body of the bungalow is your aerobic capacity, the ceiling above your head is your lactate/anaerobic threshold and the tip of the roof is your vo2 max.

A fourth element, Repetition pace, sits above them all as training at this pace allows you to run more economically at all paces. See my Bungalow diagram below.

There are little returns from hammering vo2 max and tempo sessions if you have no underlying base of the bungalow.  All you’d be doing is creating a tall, but not very wide building with little long term gain or reward.

Ideally what we want to do is build and grow the walls at the bottom of your house outwards, ie grow your aerobic base to create a bigger building at the bottom. From there, you can then push up the ceiling using tempo runs and raise the roof of the bungalow with vo2 max work. And because you have a bigger base underneath, the gains you’ll make by pushing up the ceiling and the roof will be proportionally larger.

This is why most training plans start with a substantial ‘base’ period, then add in Vo2 and Tempo work later.

All 4 elements of aerobic base, lactate threshold/tempo, vo2 max training and sprint/repetition work together to create a bigger building. I.e. a fitter and faster you.

But these things take time and it’s a slow process to elicit changes, so consistency is the key. By regularly and consistently training all the different elements of your fitness you will steadily grow the bungalow both outwards and upwards.

Even if you can only run 3 times a week, you can make improvements just by being consistent in your approach and steadily pushing and challenging yourself.

We talk about how much easy and hard to do later in the post and it’s probably not what many people think.

For a full and more detailed explanation of the physiology behind Easy, Marathon, Tempo, Interval and Repetition training, see my ‘How to Build a Training Plan’ page.

Foundations and Fundamentals

The final thing to mention in the bungalow analogy is the foundations. Like any building, the foundations upon which it is built are just as important. So let’s summarise those.

Strength, Power, Stability and Balance

When running you are almost constantly working on just one leg at a time. If you are lacking in strength, stability or balance your body and muscles are going to be working overtime to compensate and keep you stable and this wastes energy. You need to build those elements of strength, stability and balance using exercises and drills. The same goes for power as you push yourself forward with every step. The more powerful and stronger you can become the faster you will push with every step. Again, drills and exercises are the key.

It’s a sad fact that many new runners do not initially have the requisite amount of strength to run fast. Especially those of us coming to the sport later in life having spent years sitting behind a desk or in our cars for long periods.

Also, many injuries from the knee downwards are caused by weakness from the knee upwards. Achilles, calf, knee, plantar fasciitis and even over-pronation problems could all point to a weakness in the hips, glutes and core.

And at the performance end, there can become a point where you may have great fitness, but you no longer have the strength and power to go as fast as you potentially could. So your lack of strength and power becomes your limiting factor.

Your running performance will improve if you can train consistently. But you can only train consistently if you aren’t injured. See strength and conditioning as pre-hab. So you’re getting strong so that you don’t get injured. Not the other way around, ie I need to get strong now I’ve gotten injured.

There is a whole section covering strength & conditioning and drills later in the post.

Flexibility and Suppleness

No point having a giant aerobic engine and lots of power if you’re tight around the hips etc and don’t have the flexibility to make the best use of that fitness. Again, mentioned later in the post.

Strength without flexibility is rigidity, and flexibility without strength is instability.

Running Economy and Efficiency

Think of your running economy as you would think about the fuel efficiency of your car. More economical runners burn less fuel and heat up less rapidly at any given pace than less economical runners and therefore can run faster, all other factors being equal.

You can become more economical and efficient in a number of ways. Drills go a long way to reducing wasted energy by improving your technique. The other way is repeated bouts of very fast running. When you run at faster speeds you recruit more muscle fibres for economical running. These are the cells that allow you to run fast with minimal effort, minimal wasted movement and minimal energy spent. We call these speeds Repetition Pace and they are referred to later in the post.

Cadence and Stride Length

The advantage of a faster cadence (the amount of steps per minute) is the reduction in both the overall ground contact time and vertical movement (you want to move forward with each step, not upward). The likelihood of a faster cadence is that you will likely land under your body rather than over striding out in front of you. Over-striding runners who land their foot in front of them put too much pressure on their muscles and bones, almost breaking with every foot strike and making them more susceptible to injury.

Technique, Form and Skill

Running is a skill. You take up swimming, you are told how each stroke works. You play other sports and there are coaches advising on technique. It seems a bit daft that people don’t attribute the same care and attention to running.  Get your technique right and you can become a better and faster runner.

Sleep, Recovery, Lifestyle/Stress

Recovery is just as important as training as this is when you grow and adapt from the hard work you have been putting in.  In fact, recovery IS training. So if you don’t allow adequate recovery, you won’t grow and adapt. Sleep, lifestyle and stress go a long way to determining how well you will recover and ultimately how your fitness will progress as a runner.

If your sleep is rubbish and you’re stressed at work, it’s highly likely you will not recover from training as well as if you were consistently getting 8 hours of sleep a night and having carefree days. Don’t underestimate how vital sleep, recovery and lifestyle can affect your training and performance potential. You may need to adapt your run training to work around stressful situations.

Nutrition, Diet and Supplements

The fuel you put into your body is a big factor in determining the performance you get out of it. Diet for athletes can be a mind boggling topic and I’m no expert. But I would hazard a guess that if you live on a diet of Chinese Takeaways, Prosecco and Sticky Toffee Pudding your training and performance will suffer. Research shows that modern life and modern diets likely leave you deficient in certain vitamins and minerals, so consider supplementing. Also, when training we are constantly breaking our bodies to build them back up again, so consider taking in more protein in your diet to help with the repair process. Be that whole foods or supplements or shakes.

Consistency

Along with Recovery, this is the key. Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey. If all you can run is 3 times a week, fine, just run 3 times a week, but do it consistently and push yourself just a little bit each week. Consistency isn’t always exciting, but it’s a sure fire way to help you improve as a runner. It’s better to run 3 times a week every week than flit between 1 day a week one week and then trying to catch up with 4 or 5 days a week.

How to build your training week(s)

The training advice within this post consists of priority easy and marathon pace aerobic runs and a sprinkling of faster/harder running by using what we call ‘quality sessions’ each week.

The summary below details how to build your own plan. Pick and choose the combination that suits your level of fitness/ability and time/runs available each week.

Priority Workouts each week (try to do all of this each week)

• 1 x Easy Long run [Easy Pace], (up to 90 mins for 5k/10k, upto 2hrs for HM) with 20 sec bursts of speed each mile
• 1 x Marathon pace run, up to 1hr [Marathon Pace]
• 1 x Quality run (see below)

• 1 x Strength and Conditioning session i.e. home bodyweight, gym weights or pilates
• 1 x 15 min Drills session (you can tag this on the front of runs as a warm-up)
• 1 x 15 min Plyometrics session (you can tag this on the front of runs as a warm-up)

Optional recovery runs, upto 30 mins [Easy Pace]

Some combinations of how weekly runs could look and how your running could progress over time:

• 2 runs per week (1 x Easy Long with speed bursts, 1 x Marathon)
• 3 runs per week (1 x Easy Long with speed bursts, 1 x Marathon, 1 x Easy Recovery)
• 3 runs per week (1 x Easy Long with speed bursts, 1 x Marathon, 1 x Quality)
• 4 runs per week (1 x Easy Long with speed bursts, 1 x Marathon, 1 x Quality, 1 x Easy Recovery)
• 4 runs per week (1 x Easy Long with speed bursts, 1 x Marathon, 2 x Quality)
• 5 runs per week (1 x Easy Long with speed bursts, 1 x Marathon, 2 x Quality, 1 x Easy Recovery)
• 5 runs per week (1 x Easy Long with speed bursts, 1 x Marathon, 1 x Quality, 2 x Easy Recovery)

As you can see, 1 x Easy Long and 1 x Marathon Pace are your priority runs each week. Once you’ve planned those you could start to add quality/harder sessions on top, which are listed in more detail below.

I recommend short bursts of speed (strides) within each Easy run to improve your running economy. This article explains why better than I can.

Short bursts of speed in longer runs also break the monotony of running for a long time at the same cadence and stride length. Changing pace can help ward off overuse injuries by removing the repetition of repeated foot strike usage patterns.

I also recommend both a weekly Strength and Conditioning session and drills and plyometrics once a week which is all detailed in a later section.

As with all new training, I’d always recommend you err on the side of caution and build up slowly and progressively.

If you’re a relatively new runner who is running 3 times a week, simply running 2 x Easy and 1 x Marathon pace each week, but on a consistent basis may be a great starting point. Please don’t fall into the ‘new runner trap’ thinking you ‘have’ to go to a speed session to get faster. There is plenty of time later down the line to add that string to your bow once you’ve built a foundation of base aerobic fitness and required strength.  Having just started running, you will likely get faster just by running more.

Also, if you can run 4 times a week don’t instantly assume that 2 x Easy and 2 x Quality is the best route for you either. You may need to gradually build your body to that point. Maybe start with 3 x Easy and 1 x Quality for a month or two before adding more load.

Too much, too soon, and too often can be a recipe for burnout, fatigue and injury.

The heart of the running advice is that we want to be working somewhere towards the widely recommended 80/20 split.  Ie the majority of your running week i.e. 80% should be easy and the other 20% are hard quality sessions. The 80/20 split can be miles or minutes, it doesn’t really matter as it’s the ethos and sentiment that we are hitting home.

Whilst 80/20 in its purest form is arguably better suited to high mileage runners posting very high weekly totals, the underlying concept holds true for everyone. The majority of your runs need to be aerobic in nature. So for the likes of us running 3 to 5 times per week a 70/30 split is likely acceptable as long as adequate recovery is taken between sessions.

But do not fall into the trap of overloading on lots of hard sessions each week as injury, burnout and lack of progress will likely follow. Two quality hard sessions per week are the recommended maximum for most people, even those running 6 times per week.

Remember, aerobic capacity is the key to endurance events; ie 5k and upwards. So we build your aerobic cake with mainly aerobic/easy/marathon pace running then ice the cake with faster running.

Quality Sessions each week

Here are the quality sessions. Choose ONLY 1 or 2 each week depending on how many runs you do as per the combination recommendation above. There are explanations about each type below.

1. 1 x Fast / Short session [Repetition Pace]
2. 1 x Vo2 max [Interval pace], 1 x Hill Repeats [Interval effort] or 1 x Race Pace [Target 5k/10k pace]
3. 1 x Tempo [Tempo pace]

Each one of the three combined selections above works a different energy system and muscle fibres. Avoid training the same energy system more than once in the same week. I.e. only choose one workout from each of the 3 sections each week as it can take days to shed the fatigue on the energy system stressed in hard workouts.

Note: You can run easy as many times as you like.

So over a period of weeks, rotate through the quality sessions so that you are training different energy systems and muscle fibres each week. It’s almost impossible to hit every energy system every week unless you are running 7 days a week. So relax and accept that you will do this over a period of weeks by mixing up the quality workouts.

Note: a race of ANY kind is a quality/hard session and the rules on limiting quality sessions still apply. But remember, you can always use low key races as fantastic training opportunities. Don’t avoid racing, just don’t overdo it on the hard sessions each week.

If you are running 2 x Quality runs per week and are working towards a 5k or 10k, always try and make one of the Quality sessions a Fast/Short/Repetition pace run. Leg speed and running economy are vital for 10k to unlock the pace required on race day and make the best use of that strong aerobic base.

But if you are thinking about racing a Half Marathon, maybe tempo based workouts should be the priority quality workout.

You can also use this plan as a basis for Marathon training too. Common sense training by prioritising your aerobic base, and then working the other energy systems with harder sessions can work for all distances.

Don’t be a slave to the 7 day training week. Try 10-14 day training cycles?

As we’ve talked about above, it’s almost impossible it fit all of Long Easy, Marathon, Tempo, Vo2 and Repetition every week if you’re only running 3 or 4 times.  So why not ditch the constraints of a 7 day cycle and expand your training over 10 to 14 days?

That way, you should be able to include all the various quality sessions along with Easy runs and still find time for recovery days and your strength and conditioning work.

It could look something as simple as this over a 30 day period (with colour coded 7 day weeks).

Note: A day off means a day off from running, but could easily be cross training, strength work or an easy 20 minute recovery run etc.

So over the space of 30 days you will have run all the 5 prescribed run types twice each followed by a recovery period of 7 days. Once the recovery week is over (day 29) you would start the schedule of harder workouts again.

This would be a great way of regularly keeping in touch and training all the different intensities and muscle fibres.  Something that would struggle to do working to 7 day barriers.

Also, spreading the workouts like this allows for maximum recovery time from those hard sessions. As we’ve said, recovery is where the magic happens and this sort of planning really allows for that magic to happen. Not just with scheduled recovery weeks, but with those days off between workouts.

There is no physiological need to run a long run every 7 days or hit a vo2 workout every 7 days. The fitness from each intensity will stay with you for up to 2 weeks before needing another top up. So don’t be a slave to 7 day routines, there is no need to stress about fitting everything over a regular style week.

This move from 7 day training to 10 days only needs a small change of mindset and a little forward planning. But the rewards could be immense towards your consistency of training for those who can’t run every day.

But remember, you don’t need to be a slave to a rigid plan like the above, especially if you already have your set running days. For example, what if you ran 4 times per week, but you always went to Hillsborough/Graves on a Wednesday, Hillsborough Thursday and did your Easy long run on a Sunday? No problem, just pencil those in and work the other quality sessions around your standard weekly runs. Just plonk in the missing quality sessions so that are doing each one and working each intensity/fibre around every 10-14 days.

This is what it could look like (with your rigid/set runs in bold)

How does intensity relate to pace?

I put a lot of faith in the Jack Daniels VDOT training pace calculator. By using a recent race result you can get your own personal training paces for each of the different session types. Note: in the table below how subtly different the pacing is for each different intensity. And yes, these small changes in pace along with the duration of the session make all the difference in what energy system you are working with.

Below is a summary of paces, but if you are in-between a 5k time (say 20:34) you can always use the actual calculator to get a more precise set of figures.

Recommended paces (in min/mile) for each session type based on a recent 5k time and rate of perceived exertion (RPE) out of 10.