Read your plan
Is your running week built right?
You don't need us to write your plan to know if the one you're running holds up. Enter a typical week and we'll read it against the same cited sport science our plans are built on — intensity balance, quality load, and the long run.
- Intensity balance is on target — 83% easyOn track
Roughly four-fifths of your volume is easy, which is where the aerobic adaptations come from. Hold this line as you add quality.
Elite endurance athletes consistently perform approximately 80% of training at low intensity (zone 1) and 20% at moderate-to-high intensity, with minimal time in the 'gray zone' between thresholds.
- 2 quality sessions — a workable loadOn track
That leaves room to alternate hard and easy days so the hard work is absorbed, not stacked.
Systematic alternation of hard and easy training days—popularized by Bowerman—prevents cumulative fatigue and enables harder hard sessions by ensuring full recovery between quality efforts.
- Long run is a healthy 30% of the weekOn track
A meaningful long run without dominating your volume — good aerobic return.
A single 2-hour easy run produces greater aerobic adaptation than two 60-minute runs at the same intensity, because mitochondrial stimulus in slow-twitch fibers scales with continuous duration.