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How We Coach

The principles behind Runaid's approach to training

13 min read

This article describes how Runaid coaches. The principles that govern how we design training plans, prescribe sessions, and adapt to your evolving fitness and life circumstances.

You don't need to have read anything else to understand what follows. Each principle stands on its own, and together they form a complete picture of how we think about training. That said, these principles didn't emerge from nowhere — they are the practical integration of a body of knowledge we've written about in detail elsewhere: how we think about training knowledge, the physiology of running performance, the lactate curve and intensity domains, how the body fuels running, and strength training for runners. If you want to understand the foundations beneath these principles, those articles are there. But you don't need them to understand what we do and why.

Consistency is the master principle

Consistent, uninterrupted training over months and years is the single biggest driver of improvement in distance running. This is both a physiological reality — aerobic adaptations compound over long timeframes, connective tissue adapts slowly, the aerobic base that underpins everything takes years to fully develop — and a practical observation: the athletes who improve most are those who avoid extended interruptions from injury, illness, or burnout.

Everything we prescribe is evaluated against this standard: does this protect the athlete's ability to train consistently?

A sustainable plan executed for 50 weeks beats a theoretically optimal plan that breaks down after 6. This has practical consequences that shape every decision we make. We err on the side of doing slightly less than the theoretical maximum. We treat emerging niggles seriously — a small modification now prevents a large interruption later. We build planned recovery into every training cycle as a non-negotiable feature, not an afterthought. And we are prepared to protect athletes from their own ambition when it outpaces their current capacity, because the cost of overreaching is measured in weeks or months of lost training, not in a single disappointing session.

Training is a weekly optimisation problem

The goal of training is not to maximise the stimulus from any single session. It is to maximise total adaptation across the full set of sessions in a week — sustained over months.

This reframe changes how you think about almost everything in the plan. Easy running is not a lesser form of training. It is the answer to a specific question: given that the athlete can only absorb a limited number of hard sessions per week, what should they do with the remaining sessions? The answer is easy running — it provides meaningful aerobic development at minimal fatigue cost, preserving the athlete's capacity to execute hard sessions well and to train again the next day.

The widely cited "80/20 rule" — that roughly 80% of training should be at easy intensity — is an emergent property of this optimisation, not a universal law. When an athlete runs 10–14 sessions per week, the recovery mathematics produce something close to 80/20 because the athlete can only absorb 2–3 hard sessions. For an athlete training 3–4 times per week, the same optimisation logic produces a much higher intensity fraction — perhaps two quality sessions and one easy run. Both are correct applications of the same principle. We reason from the optimisation, not from a memorised ratio.

The best training week is not the hardest one the athlete can survive. It is the hardest one they can repeat for months.

Every session has a purpose

There are no junk sessions in a well-designed plan. Every session targets a specific physiological adaptation, and if the coach cannot articulate what that adaptation is, the session should not be there.

Easy runs develop the aerobic base at low fatigue cost. Threshold sessions shift the lactate curve rightward. VO₂max intervals raise the aerobic ceiling. Long runs build durability. Strength sessions improve running economy and tissue resilience. Each has a clear rationale grounded in the physiology of performance.

The corollary is that easy must be genuinely easy. The most common training error among amateur runners is running easy sessions too hard — drifting into moderate intensity by default. This doesn't eliminate the training benefit; if anything, the per-session stimulus is slightly greater. The problem is the fatigue cost. Easy runs exist to provide aerobic development cheaply, preserving the athlete's capacity for the sessions that drive specific adaptation. Running them too hard breaks that bargain.

A clarification worth making: moderate intensity is not a forbidden zone. Marathon-pace work sits squarely in the moderate domain for most amateur runners. The Norwegian double-threshold model deliberately targets sub-threshold intensities with high frequency. These are purposeful, well-designed sessions with clear physiological rationale. The error is not running at moderate intensity — it is running at moderate intensity when the session's purpose calls for easy effort.

Train the limiter

Distance running performance is determined by the interaction of a small number of physiological variables: VO₂max, the lactate threshold, running economy, and durability. Improvement comes from identifying which of these is the current constraint for the specific athlete and directing training toward it.

A newer runner with modest fitness across all variables will often improve fastest by building VO₂max — the ceiling is low and responsive to training. An experienced runner whose VO₂max has plateaued may find the gains in threshold development — able to sustain a higher fraction of a stable ceiling. A runner who races well over 10k but fades in the marathon may have a durability gap that no amount of threshold work will solve. A runner with strong physiology but pedestrian race times may have an economy issue that strength training can address.

This means a generic plan — one that emphasises the same variables for every athlete — is structurally suboptimal. The plan should reflect a diagnosis of what the individual needs most, right now.

That diagnosis is a judgment call, not a formula. It draws on race history, training response, and the coach's assessment of where the constraint lies. And it must be held provisionally. If the prescribed approach doesn't produce the expected response within a reasonable timeframe, the diagnosis updates. This is not a failure of coaching — it is coaching working as intended. The epistemology article makes the case that acting well under uncertainty, and revising when evidence arrives, is the hallmark of good practice in any applied domain.

Build from the aerobic base upward

Distance running is fundamentally aerobic. Regardless of the athlete's level or target event, the majority of training volume should be at easy, aerobic intensities. This applies to the beginner doing four runs per week and the sub-elite marathoner doing fourteen. The ratio shifts with experience and proximity to a race, but the principle does not.

The aerobic base — mitochondrial density, capillary networks, cardiac adaptations, connective tissue resilience — is the foundation on which all other fitness is built. Threshold work, VO₂max intervals, speed development, and race-specific preparation are only effective when layered on top of a well-developed aerobic system. Attempting to build race fitness without this foundation is building a house on sand.

Specificity increases as the race approaches. Base phases are general: build fitness broadly across determinants. Build phases introduce work that begins to resemble race demands. Sharpening phases are highly specific to the target event — in intensity, duration, terrain, and fuelling practice. The training progressively comes to resemble the race it is preparing for.

Progressive overload requires patience. Build volume before intensity. Build intensity gradually within a volume that is already comfortable. Connective tissue — tendons, ligaments, bones — adapts more slowly than the cardiovascular system, and ignoring these timelines is one of the most common paths to injury. The impatience of motivated amateur athletes is one of the greatest risks to their development. We are prepared to advocate for patience and to explain why the slower path is often the faster one.

Life stress is training stress

Every athlete using Runaid has a life that is not running. Work, family, sleep, commuting, relationships, travel, illness — all impose physiological stress. The body does not distinguish between training load and life load. When life stress is high, training load should decrease. Stacking hard training on top of a hard life week is a path to breakdown, not adaptation.

We do not prescribe as though the athlete has the schedule and recovery environment of a professional. Acknowledging constraints is not lowering expectations — it is coaching the real person, not an idealised version of them. A plan that accounts for a demanding job, variable sleep, and a young family is a better plan than one that ignores these realities, even if it looks less impressive on paper.

Recovery is where adaptation happens. Training provides the stimulus; rest is when the body responds. Easy days must be genuinely easy. Recovery weeks are non-negotiable elements of the plan, not signs of weakness. Sleep is the single most powerful recovery tool available, and we advocate for it accordingly.

Strength training is part of the running programme

Strength training is not a separate, parallel activity. It is a component of the running programme, subordinate to the running periodisation and designed to serve running performance.

The goals are clear: improve running economy through neuromuscular adaptation (the evidence here is strong), and build tissue resilience to support higher training loads (the physiological rationale is sound, though the running-specific evidence is less direct). Both are achieved through the same approach: heavy compound lower-body movements, heavy calf work, and progressive overload — not through high-rep circuits or bodyweight exercises that lack sufficient stimulus for meaningful adaptation.

S&C frequency, volume, and exercise selection are determined by the training phase. Base phases are the window for building strength — 2–3 sessions per week with full exercise variety. As race-specific training intensifies, S&C reduces to maintenance. The strength work fits into the slots the running programme allows, not the other way around.

Coaching is a relationship, not a plan

A training plan generator takes inputs — goals, current fitness, available time — and produces a static output. Runaid is building something different: a coaching relationship that adapts to the athlete's evolving fitness, life circumstances, and responses to training.

The distinction matters in practice. A static plan cannot know that your threshold session on Tuesday felt unusually hard because you slept badly on Monday. It cannot connect a pattern of rising fatigue across three weeks to the fact that your job stress has increased. It cannot notice that your long-run pace has drifted faster than prescribed and gently correct it before the cumulative fatigue catches up. Coaching can.

The draft training plan produced during onboarding is a starting point and a diagnostic tool — the athlete's reaction to it, and their early training data, reveal more about their actual capacity than abstract questioning ever could. The plan is expected to change. That is not a flaw in the plan. It is the coaching relationship working as designed.

The highest-value coaching output is insight that emerges from observation over time — patterns across weeks and months that no single session reveals. A gradual rightward shift in the lactate curve. A subtle change in how the athlete describes effort. A connection between a recovery week and a breakthrough session two weeks later. This longitudinal view is what separates coaching from prescription.

Honesty over comfort

When the athlete needs to hear a hard truth — they're doing too much, they're under-recovering, their goal is unrealistic for the timeframe, or they're ignoring a warning sign — we say so. Clearly, constructively, and with genuine care for their long-term development. But we say so.

We do not soften feedback to the point of obscuring it. We do not use the compliment sandwich. A serious athlete would rather hear "sub-40 in eight weeks is not realistic from 46:30 — here's what I think is achievable and how we get there" than vague encouragement that avoids the uncomfortable truth.

This extends to epistemic honesty — the principle that runs through every article in this series. When we're confident, we state our position clearly. When we're uncertain, we say so. When we're making a judgment call rather than applying settled science, we explain the reasoning and the assumptions. When we change our mind in light of new information, we explain why.

The first article in this series argued that honest engagement with the limits of knowledge is a strength, not a weakness. That principle isn't just an intellectual position we hold about sports science. It governs how we coach. The athlete should learn that when the coaching team offers an observation, it is grounded in the best available reasoning — and when it is revised, that revision is also grounded. Trust is built not by being right every time, but by being honest about the basis for every recommendation.

What this means in practice

The principles above are not abstract ideals. They are operational commitments that shape every training plan we produce.

They mean that we will sometimes prescribe less than the athlete expects — because consistency matters more than any single week of impressive volume. They mean we will ask about sleep, work stress, and how the last session felt before adjusting the plan — because life context is training context. They mean we will be direct about what goals are realistic and what timelines are achievable — because honesty serves the athlete better than ambition that ends in disappointment.

They also mean we will get things wrong sometimes. The epistemological reality of coaching individuals is that certainty is not available. What is available is well-reasoned, transparent, adaptive coaching — training that draws on the best science, the deepest practical wisdom, is calibrated to the specific person, and adjusts based on what actually happens.

That is what Runaid is building. Not optimal training — because optimal is structurally unachievable when coaching individuals in complex, uncontrolled environments. Near-optimal training, honestly pursued, consistently delivered, and always open to revision.

This article is part of a series exploring the knowledge and principles behind Runaid's coaching approach:

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