Episode 466: Running Starter Pack

For this episode, I dive into some of the fundamental elements to structuring a running program in a sustainable way. This guide is helpful for beginners and runners looking to best organize their current training.

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Episode Transcript:

Alright, welcome back for this episode. I'm going to dive a bit into structuring your endurance training, or in this case run training. I think it's a good time of year to do it given that we're coming up on the end of the year and people will be looking at their fitness or what they wanna do with fitness and lots of people will be considering adding, running to that in order to improve.

And there are also probably people who have been runners that are maybe interested in fine tuning some things or dialing some things in. So I wanted to share some of my philosophy and ways I go about this stuff for that group of people too. So this episode's going to be a little bit of a starter pack, if you will, when it comes to getting yourself positioned to be successful.

Because the last thing we wanna see is people get into the sport of running or. Be spinning their wheels within the sport of running because they don't have good direction or an idea of how they should be thinking about some of these things. So the way I usually like to start off this topic in general is looking at it through the lens of consistency is going to trump all for the most part.

Meaning that whether you're a beginner, you've been doing this for a while. We all have different lifestyles, and those lifestyles allow us to dedicate certain amounts of time. So in order to be consistent, we need to be honest with ourselves first and foremost, about how much time we're willing to invest in this project.

So the first thing I usually recommend somebody do is sit down. And just take a look at their lifestyle and their calendar and fine tune things a bit to see what is the actual level of commitment you can do and stick to sustainably meaning like, what things maybe should I remove or can I remove without too much pain, being that if I eliminate this I'm going to be able to be happy and healthy by not having it in there.

Versus a scenario where if I eliminate this, it's just a matter of time before I feel like the new input is crowding out my real interests, and therefore I'm not going to be consistent with those new inputs in this case running because I removed something that was more valuable or more interesting to me.

There's that side of things. There's also just. Obligations that you can't necessarily control, like work, family life, engaging socially and things like that. All things that I think are important in being healthy and happy human beings. So sitting down and looking at your personal calendar, lifestyle, where the wiggle room is, where the time to dedicate is located, and really just coming up with.

A schedule of how much you can dedicate. So from there, that gives us a good starting point of what we wanna work up towards or work within at a certain point. What I mean by that is, let's say someone sits down and they determine, alright, I've got six hours per week to dedicate towards this journey.

I'm going to go on with running, and if that's the case, great, we're going to use that six hour per week framework to build things out for that so that you can consistently. Work your way up to that. If you're new or if you're already at that and you just wanna fine tune things, you can work within that framework in the way that's going to give you the most value for that time spent.

But either way, we're looking for that number that you can commit to and not feel like coming, at the end of February you've lost course, because it actually wasn't sustainable within your framework. The way I like to look at this is. When you're starting to get into running, we want a foundation. So what that means is we want you to start your journey with a foundation of low intensity work so that when we do get into some more varied training in terms of interval sessions at higher paces.

Or intensities on the aerobic intensity spectrum, you've got the ability to tolerate that in the most meaningful way. Or another way to look at that is if you maximize your volume allowance, then you're going to have a bigger budget to dedicate towards some of that quality work you might do, and the better quality you're going to get out of that, the better return you're going to get, being consistent within that.

So usually the way I like to look at this is. Give yourself a ramp up period of time where you are just working up to being able to run at an easy intensity to that volume allowance you've given yourself. And some ways I like to structure that would be a fairly even distribution of volume and then.

One longer run per week. So whether you decide, hey, I'm going to be doing a four day per week running structure, a five, a six, a seven, whatever it happens to be, you're distributing it relatively evenly with the exception of a single run per week where you're going to go a little bit longer. And with that run, I'm usually going to suggest that someone target right around 20 to maybe 25% of their weekly volume.

Towards that longer session. And then you're going to wanna start where you're at. So if you're brand new to this and you haven't been running, then you know you're starting at zero. So if we use that example of six hours per week, you don't necessarily want to jump right in at six hours per week. 'cause that might be overkill.

So working your way up to that is a good strategy to make sure that it's sustainable and that you're able to actually normalize that amount of volume at low intensity. Before we start introducing ourselves, Different workout stimulus in terms of how you ramp up to that. There's a lot of them. Like pieces of advice and things like that online that would say what's safe, what's not safe?

The 10% increase per week gets thrown around a lot. I would say that 10% is a very broad number. Meaning that it can be appropriate for some people. There's probably a good percentage of people where that would be a reasonable thing to do, but it's not going to be a universal one size fits all necessarily either.

If you wanna be conservative with things and really lower risk of injury, I think sticking to a 10% increase is probably going to give you that advantage of, I'm not going to get three, four weeks into this and then notice that I've got an overuse injury because I jumped up way too fast. I think it's once we start seeing people creep up closer to 20.

Maybe a 30% increase in their total volume. Week over week is where they start running into problems in terms of increasing their risk of injury and potentially getting hurt, or in some cases maybe burning out too, because they've just revamped their lifestyle at such an aggressive rate that they didn't have time to really normalize it and make that fit within their routine in a way that felt comfortable and sustainable.

That's kinda that first step is getting that low intensity base established and in place, and I am going to go over how to gauge that. 'cause saying Run easy is one thing, actually going out, running easy is another. We'll get into that. Next, I want to jump into some of those guides in terms of what it is that we're using to map out types of workouts and intensities and things like that.

So one thing that I typically see that pops up quite a bit is. There's mostly, I would say, three main use tools. Tools that people will use when they're going out for a run, and one of those is RPE or rate of perceived exertion. Another is heart rate. Some people will say, okay, I'm going to do this run at a given heart rate range, and that's how I know I am doing it.

And the other one's pace. You're picking some sort of pace per mile or pace per kilometer that you're trying to target for a specific workout. So I look at all three of those things as tools that can help you with your training and your development. But I also look at them as different tools, meaning some are going to be better than others at certain things.

So when it comes to. Intra-workout guides, that's one thing. And then there's post-workout analysis tools, and that's a whole another thing. So when someone wants to start thinking about a way to learn to run and target their workouts, I really like to use the rate of perceived exertion as that benchmark of what you wanna learn or get used to using as your intro workout guide.

So whether you're going out for an easy run. Whether you're going out for an interval session that's higher on the aerobic intensity spectrum, like maybe a VO two max target or a longer interval type session, so maybe a lactate threshold type target. You have an idea of what that feels like so that you are able to go out and execute that workout.

And then go back and assess the quality of it with some of those other tools later on. And the reason I like that is because when we look at things that are more fixed and more reliably accurate, that's what's going to give us that. So pace is going to be a moving target, meaning that when you start out in your running journey, you may produce specific paces at different intensities as you improve.

Those intensities are going to feel the same. You may change the duration at which you're able to tolerate a specific intensity, but the feel is going to be generally static over time, whereas the pace is going to be a moving target. If things are going well, you should see that pace improve. If you're doing easy running for a long period of time and that's a new stimulus, then you should see your pace at that ease.

Intensity improves over time, so that pace is a moving target. Same thing with things like long intervals and short intervals. If you spend some time doing some long intervals, that pace, you're able to hit the beginning of that. Input to what you're going to see, maybe in four weeks, six weeks or something like that is going to change.

So that pace again becomes another moving target, making it something that you gotta be careful with how you use that. And heart rate's another one where I think this one is a little bit more static in the sense that it's not going to change drastically on you in a similar climate. Now you start adding weather variables, then it can be super varied.

Where, take me for example, if I go out for. A run that is relatively easy. I may feel pretty similar, on a humid day versus a nice cool day other than, there's obviously you notice the humidity and the weather and that is a stressor in and of itself. But in terms of how well I'm able to execute that workout, I can be at a similar pace with a heart rate range sometimes.

Maybe even 15 beats per minute difference. And that doesn't necessarily mean I wanna slow down and chase a heart rate. I will say I think heart rate is a fairly useful tool in a lot of cases when we're looking at lower intensity training because you just got a lot of time to get into it and then stay there.

But once we start moving up the aerobic intensity spectrum into things like long intervals and short intervals, targeting those higher intensities like lactate threshold and VO two max, I just find heart rate to be a little too messy for my liking in that by the time you get your heart rate in a range, if you ever do with some framework, that may or may not be accurate.

You've already gotten far enough into that where it's not a reasonable guide to use. So I'll jump into some of that stuff later in terms of how we maybe navigate those things and those workouts in a bit here as well. So when it comes to the rate of perceived exertion. That is something that you have to learn.

If someone's new to running or even somewhat experienced, they may not have an attachment point to what it means to run at this intensity. So I like to give you some descriptors for that so you can pay attention to what you should be feeling or noticing during those as a way to get started and then.

Again, we can use some of these other tools and I'll talk about some field tests and things to help calibrate with this stuff as well in a bit that will be helpful in putting together this and understanding it and eventually getting to a point where you can reliably use rate of perceived exertion pretty much across the board for all of your running if you want to as your primary guide point.

So when it comes to low intensity training, I look at that as basically as easy as you can go. From a walk all the way up to what we would call your aerobic threshold, or some people will call that kind of the end of zone two. And the way I look at that intensity is if you are running within that framework, when you get up near the end of it, where if you go any faster, you'll be crossing over that easy and low intensity framework, that endpoint, you should still be able to carry a multi sentence conversation with people.

With another person sharing 50% of the talking. So if I'm out there running with a friend, I should be able to have a conversation with them, assuming they're doing 50% of the talking and I'm doing 50% of the talking and not feel like that's not doable. If it gets to a point where that's not doable and I'm getting just like phrases out and then I'm losing my breath and I can't necessarily carry that conversation, I'm probably going a little bit faster than the intent of what would be.

Within the low intensity framework that we're looking for there. So keep in mind that is the ceiling of it. So if you're out for a really easy recovery run, you may find that you don't wanna be up that high onto that intensity spectrum. You're better off sitting even lower in that to the degree where you would be able to, talking like complete sentences, no problem with, without sharing the load and not feel like you're losing your breath to any large degree.

So using that kind of as a marker of this is probably my red line, and staying in the low intensity is a good way to start testing those things out when you're out there running to make sure you are doing the right things there. Next is that next realm of where we're going outta that low intensity into kind of the moderate range of the intent aerobic intensity spectrum.

So this would be like from your aerobic threshold up to your lactate threshold. The way I like to look at this one is the top end of that range is an intensity that you should feel like you're working, but it shouldn't feel like you're really pressured by it. To the degree where it's hard to determine that you could keep doing it.

You should feel like I could do this for a bit of time without feeling like the wheels are just going to completely come off. And one way to maybe gauge that would be within this framework, you should be able to speak in phrases. If you can speak in some phrases and not feel like that's too burdensome to be able to continue, then it's unlikely that you've crossed over that top end of that.

But then again, depending on the workout structure and how you're framing things, think of that as the ceiling versus something that you would. I always have to get up. If you're looking at just crossing your aerobic threshold and running in kind of that moderate territory, then we get into the higher intensity phase of the aerobic intensity spectrum, and this one is going to be from that lactate threshold up to your VO two max.

So this one is going to be a little more challenging than the other two. As you probably imagine, the top end of this one should be something where you might be able to say one or two words at a time and still continue to work at this intensity. Feel comfortable within it if you're near that top end of it.

So if you're getting up to the top end, or if you're doing a workout at this intense and you're noticing, Hey, I'm struggling to even be able to get one or two words out, then you might wanna pull back a little bit. 'cause you may be crossing over that and overshooting a little bit on that. If it's something where.

You're trying to get to that, to the top end of that, and you have no problem speaking in phrases or complete sentences, in which case it's possible that you're maybe going a little light on that one and you can afford to go a little bit harder for those. So that's like a talk test type of framework I'll like to use sometimes for people to give them on an attachment point to start learning some of these things, to be able to really understand where they are.

Naturally. I think this gets more difficult to use as a tool to learn the higher you go on the aerobic intensity spectrum. So sometimes having some other options to help you get dialed in with this can be really useful, especially if we're doing things like long intervals at your lactate threshold or short intervals at your VO two max.

So this is where I really like to use field tests. We don't guess with sort of population level averages and things like that, or even talk tests, and we just go out and do some work, and then we build around that work, because that's a specific example to yourself. So if I want someone to have an attachment point to start learning from, that allows us to structure things like.

Long intervals that are up to their lactate threshold. I'm going to program them a field test where I have 'em go out and do a warmup, do some dynamic stretches, and then some strides, and then go and run 30 minutes at a pretty hard effort. Give it a good push. You shouldn't feel like you're destroyed like at the end of the race where you can't run another step, but you should feel like you worked pretty hard for that 30 minutes.

It's noticeably more difficult than if you just went out for a nice, easy run and. If we take the pace you hit for that time trial, that 30 minute time trial, we can start using that pace as a workout guide in the short term. But remember what I said before where pace is a moving target. So once we start using that pace in the workouts.

We wanna pay very close attention to how those workouts feel, so that you start developing an understanding of how those intervals feel. And once we start seeing things like, oh, your effort is dropping at that pace, or we look at heart rate as a post-workout analysis tool and we're looking at your workout chart.

We noticed that pace is starting to produce lower heart rate readings than it did prior in similar environments and weather conditions. Then that can be assigned to us that we need to respond to that moving target and bring your pace down. And then over time we're continuously doing that to realize your progress and make sure you're still matching the intensity we're looking at for those workouts versus just.

Running at a pace that's no longer appropriate for the intensity we're targeting. A similar thing with the higher side of the aerobic intensity spectrum is a field test. I like to do something that's around 12 minutes long. You could go shorter, you could go nine, but nine to 12 minutes similar to the 30 minute one.

A really good push. You don't have to feel like you're absolutely destroying yourself like it's the end of a race, but you should make it feel like you gave it a pretty good hard push within the framework of what you could do for that nine to 12 minutes and. That can give us a starting point as well, where now we have a pace that we can use to build short intervals off of and like we did with the long intervals, start out by targeting that pace.

And once we start seeing things like, alright, the effort is starting to drop at this pace for these types of sessions. We can move on and pull that pace down a little bit. Or again, if we go and we look at it through the charts afterwards and we're starting to see heart rates lower at those intervals, over time, we can start re-calibrating the pace to be more appropriate and maintaining that intensity.

So either way though, these are giving you more options to learn. What the effort feels like at these different intensities, and the more times you do this, the better you're going to get at. Just like anything, the more practice you have at recognizing what something feels like, the more attached you are to it and the more you're able just to replicate it on command when you're out there doing a specific workout.

The other thing I usually like to remind people about these things is. We're looking at ranges in a lot of cases with these intensities, it's not super precise to the degree where one or two seconds per mile or a couple heart rate beats or some of these things are making or breaking the workout themselves.

So I think when we're starting out and we're learning these things, giving yourself a little bit of flexibility to really explore it can be very helpful in feeling like you're actually making progress. 'cause you are, and not beating yourself up or feeling like you failed a workout or something like that, and getting discouraged by that because again, we want to be having a positive feedback loop mentally so that we can maintain the consistency over time and therefore continue to do this in a way that's sustainable.

The last thing that I'll talk about with respect to this sort of stuff is just how I like to structure some of these things where we have these different intensities and these different ranges and things like that, that we're working within. So I'll start from the top on this one. With the short intervals, I usually like to start with a framework of a one-to-one work to rest ratio, which just means for every say, minute of work you do at that intensity that we're maybe pinning to that nine to 12 minute time trial up near your VO two max is going to be done with an extra, with a minute of recovery in between.

That can range from like a brisk walk all the way to a light jog, but we want to frame those intervals in that structure where however you structure it, you have that equal part rest to work with long intervals. We wanna go closer to two to one. In that scenario, it could be something like, let's say you're doing eight minutes, three by eight minutes.

If that interval's eight minutes long, the rest recovery in between is going to be four minutes. Similar to the short intervals, something between a brisk walk and a light jog is usually the way we're going to wanna start out with those, and that's going to allow you to hit that. That target intensity with enough recovery to replicate it.

There's a ton of interesting stuff you can do outside of that very simple framework of one-to-one and two to one. Over time, once you've learned the perceived effort and gotten comfortable with that to either make the workout more difficult or create additional stressors to drive adaptations, one of those things can be reducing rest.

So I do think there is value over time in say, deviating from those structures of one to one and two to one, and. Making that workout possibly a little more difficult, but at the same volume in order to drive better adaptation or not. Not better adaptations, just more adaptations because you've gotten to that point.

So an example of that could be you've gotten to a point where you're not able to really add a whole lot more training volume 'cause you've already maxed that out, but you want to make a long interval session a little bit more difficult so that you can continue to progress. And instead of doing that three by eight with four minutes, maybe you reduce the recovery down to three minutes in between or two minutes so that you are hitting those intensities, but you're giving yourself less time to recover.

In between, that's going to be a next step you can do now to, to a certain degree. You can also just add more volume to that workout if you like that structure. And if you have the time to do it and your body's responding and you want to add a little more training volume, then yeah, you could just add longer.

Duration to that too. So maybe that's doing three by 10 minutes or three by 12 minutes instead of the three by eight. 'cause then you're getting the same kind of workout structure, but with more volume at work and therefore driving more adaptations, assuming you've adapted to those other ones and you're ready for that step up.

So that's kinda how I like to look at those. The other one I like to talk a little bit is just. That easy intensity because this one can be something where I see people chasing numbers. Sometimes that can maybe be a scenario where more isn't always better. So I'll use myself as an example here. Like right now, if I look at my profile.

On training peaks where if I look at that base intensity or that zone two part where I'm doing kind of the higher side of the easy category up to my aerobic threshold, that pace range right now for me. It's going to be between something in the high six minute per mile pace all the way down to something in the low six to even in really good conditions in the high five minute per mile pace range.

So if I'm scheduling myself something that's like zone two or what I call base intensity and I'm going out there and every single time I'm just working myself as down to that fast as possible point within that framework, that's not necessarily going to be in my best interest if it comes at the expense of quality.

For future sessions or the AM or compromising the amount, a training volume, I'm able to get in because I am overcooking to some degree by going a little too hard within that framework too consistently. So this is where. I think you wanna be mindful of what else is in the plan at the moment to be in mind, to be a little bit more strategic about when maybe you push to the high end of that or when you sit closer to the lower end of that or the slower end of that.

And a few examples that could be like if I'm doing some intervals, if I'm in that phase of training where those are in the plan, I may wanna be careful about pushing down to the fast end of that base intensity too frequently because. I could be getting to a point where I'm bleeding into the quality that I'm able to get out of that future interval session.

The other scenario would be, let's say I have a framework where I have a run like that scheduled and the next day is a rest day. Maybe I don't have the interval's on the schedule that are coming up 'cause I'm still building volume and things like that. In that scenario, I may be much more likely to push towards the high end of that if I'm feeling good.

And that kind of comes a little bit more naturally because. I'm not really going to have this opportunity cost of it bleeding into another workout, to the same degree as I would if I had a short interval session coming up in the next couple of days. So be mindful of what's coming up next, and also pay attention as you're doing these workouts over time in terms of what your body's recovery needs are from being on the lower end to the higher end, or something in between.

Those are just really important things to maybe journal or take notes of so that when you're going into those sessions. You're able to kinda self-regulate within that framework a little bit and not necessarily lean too far one way or the other. The other thing I usually like to talk about with this is there is the whole concept around just racing and events and things like that, which a lot of people are going to do if they're getting into endurance training.

So usually. These races come in a variety of different shapes and sizes, so looking at what you want to do with that can be important in terms of how you're structuring workouts at a certain point as well, where say. If I'm training for a hundred mile race, that produces a certain intensity. If I'm training for a 5K, that produces a whole nother intensity and then everything in between that.

So each one of these different race distances within endurance sport is going to have a different intensity that you're going to be able to sustain on race day. So when it comes to doing workouts that are going to be specific to race day, which I think is important. I would usually place those closer to the event itself rather than early in the training plan.

I think that's where we get a little bit more varied in terms of where we land on that aerobic intensity spectrum with workouts like that. So there's a lot of online conversation around zone two and VO two max and all these other different training inputs, and then. A lot of times you'll see things about a gray area training zone where, you know it's bad to be in this zone three territory or this moderate intensity because it's too slow to be fast enough to yield the results you're looking for from an interval session.

But it's, or it's too slow to, to yield those values for that, but it's too fast to be truly a low intensity and there's some truth to that. It is also something where I think with the right timeline and the right approach, it can be a very valuable tool and gives you the opportunity to practice that race day pace if it falls within that.

And this is where a lot of times people will find themselves if maybe they're a little bit more advanced and they're running a marathon, that might just be right in that range of intensity. Or if you're a little bit newer, that might just come at a half marathon or something like that.

I think it's important to remind yourself of that with respect to races themselves, but then there's also the whole concept of being able to continually develop over time. So a lot of times when I'm looking at what someone has been doing in training over the last, say, few months or even years, is what have they been doing versus what have they not been doing?

So if I'm working with someone and they've been doing a lot of short intervals, a lot of low intensity running. They've likely extracted a lot of value outta those already, so they're seeking to improve on those by continuing to do it that way is likely low because they've done a lot of that work. So then where is the holdup in their training input?

Where are the interns that haven't done as much of that? If we spend a little time there. It can maybe free up some ability to improve on those other spots that they've been doing more of when we go back to them. So that's another scenario where sometimes I'd like to throw in some more moderate intensity intervals that are a fair bit lower than the lactate threshold targets that we would do for some of those long intervals.

And it's still faster than those base intensities. And I think those can be something valuable to drop in when you haven't done anything like for a while. Or if you're finding yourself in a bit of a rut where you've been doing all the things that you feel like you're supposed to be doing, but you've been avoiding a certain block within the aerobic intensity spectrum for quite some time.

It can be something where you almost just look at that and ask yourself what have I not been doing recently? And to be a well-rounded runner. You probably wanna start doing some of that at some point so that you're not creating weaknesses that are compromising your development on the strengths that you've been developing over time.

Finally, I want to talk about just how we might structure some of these things. So you're learning these different training targets in terms of rate of perceived exertion, maybe how to use heart rate or pace and things like that as guides or post-workout. Assessment tools and stuff like that, how do you actually order these things in a manner that's going to yield productivity over time?

If I look at it purely just through someone who wants to improve their endurance versus train specifically for a race, usually I go back to what we started out, where we're in that beginning stage and we're working on introducing low intensity volume up to that point where you've hit that training allotment that you've given yourself and you've gotten comfortable within that.

So now you're able to do that. It's not feeling like it's an increase in stress. You've normalized. It's part of your routine. You're feeling like you've got that. You've extracted the value out of that. And one thing I'll usually see with this type of scenario is they get up to that volume tolerance or that volume quota that they've given themselves.

And we've sat there for a little bit of time and we're no longer seeing their pace improve at that intensity. That is a sign that. We've established the foundation, we're probably not going to get a whole lot faster by just continuing to do the same thing over and over again. 'cause your body has made those adaptations.

It's time to introduce a new stimulus. So this is where I think is a really good time to start. Looking at the workouts between the short intervals and the long intervals that I talked about before is really good starting points. So for a real basic, simple structure, it could just be that. Where you decide to drop in one of those sessions each week, and maybe you alternate between doing one week, doing the long intervals and another week doing the short intervals and going on a rotation like that for a while and seeing just like how that improves your pace at given intensities if you're a little bit more of an advanced runner.

And if you've been doing a lot of running historically, or more running historically, and you can tolerate more volume, then you may find yourself in a situation where you can do a couple of those sessions per week. And in that case, maybe you want to do a short interval session, one day per week, a long interval session, one day per week, and pair that up with your easy runs, your base runs, and your long runs.

To give yourself a little bit more of an input from that. And really the driver for whether you're on one side or the other has a lot to do with just your experience with running or the amount of volume you are currently running at. So one way to maybe understand this is the more low intensity volume base you have or the higher that number is.

The higher intensity on the aerobic intensity spectrum types of sessions, like short intervals and long intervals, you're going to be able to tolerate. So one of the advantages of building up your base to the highest point that you can have available to you is it unlocks. More volume that you're able to tolerate and spend at those interval sessions, or in other words, you've got more tools to use within that framework of training.

When you do get to that and start adding that in, if we look at it outside of just like the overall development side of things with respect to being, getting like the health benefits and being a better endurance person is I wanna do a race, I want to target something that's got a very specific intensity tied to it in that framework.

I like to look at it through the lens of all of these things being important, but the order of operations is going to be best served, being least specific to most specific, starting from that strong aerobic foundation. So let's say you go through that phase where you've worked up to being able to tolerate the volume allotment you've given yourself, and now you're thinking, okay, I wanna start adding some interval sessions and working towards my goal.

Once you have that goal event and you can determine what intensity you're going to be doing that at, then you wanna start introducing more of the types of workouts that are going to be useful in getting you there, but are least specific to that intensity. So some extreme examples of this would be, let's say you're training for a hundred mile race.

You're going to wanna start in that case by doing your short intervals first, because that's going to be an important variable in improving your hundred miles. Finishing time, but it's going to be very unspecific to what you're actually doing at that a hundred mile race. So we still wanna do it, but since it's not specific, we wanna do it earlier in the plan.

So maybe I'm starting out with short intervals off of that base building foundation development aspect of training. Let's say you're doing. Something shorter like a 5K. Now all of a sudden those short intervals are much closer to the intensity you're actually going to go during that race itself.

So in that scenario, you may not start with short intervals. You may wait and do those later in the plan when you're closer to the race itself as a lead in to maybe adding some race day specific workouts or intervals along with it. Where we're still following that same process. So those are two fairly far ends of the spectrum in terms of endurance distances between the 5K and the hundred mile.

But you have all sorts of stuff in between that can help with that. The way that I like to think about it too is the closer you get to the middle, the more you can include some mix of that together versus focusing a little bit more specifically on one and then moving on to another, or having less blending.

The more likely you're going to be able to have a framework like that. So sometimes when I'm talking to people and they're. Indifferent about what race they wanna do. We'll look at just the workout structure that they like. If there's someone who likes a lot of variety where it's not necessarily, okay, we're going to spend some time really focusing on maintaining the base and foundation that you built, but also doing a lot more short intervals with not a whole lot of variety outside of that from their interval side, and then moving on to longer intervals and then getting maybe moderate.

Moderate intensity, longer intervals, and then ultimately longer in development like you'd maybe do for a really long race, like a hundred mile miler. Maybe they would rather do something where the, they're going back and forth a little bit more between these different interval types and things like that, and that's just a little more motivating, a little more exciting for them, in which case then maybe we wanna pick a race that's going to accommodate them, keeping that blend in the rotation a little bit more frequently.

That at the end of the day, we're still maintaining the excitement and the enjoyment piece of the puzzle because if we go back to that consistency piece, that's going to be very important. If you don't enjoy the training or really like the training that you're doing for the race itself, it's way less likely that you're going to be consistent with that building towards it, and ultimately get everything you can outta yourself and then continue to wanna do it after you finish that goal race.

That's what I got here for this running starter pack or overview of some of these things. If you have any questions or follow ups on all of that stuff, feel free to reach out to me on my website zachbitterr.com or any of my socials like Instagram @zachbitter or X @zbitter. Happy to help you out with any of that stuff. If you have any questions.