RunCoachedFrom the RunCoached guide
One of the week's hard days.
A hard session: tempo, intervals, hills or fartlek.
What it is for
Quality sessions make you faster. Each kind trains a different part of your fitness.
Which kind
The session title says which kind it is. Run club is often a tempo or an interval session.
The usual session
Before race-specific training, your hard run is cruise intervals: 5 × 6 min a little slower than tempo pace, with 1 min of walking or easy jogging between. It is hard enough to train you and easy to repeat. Later weeks also use tempo runs. Coach chooses this repeatable session to balance training and recovery.
Longer each block
When you complete the session, your next block adds 1 rep, or 5 min to a tempo run, at the same pace. The limit is 8 reps or 30 min, and the session must still have time for a warm-up and a cool-down. If you miss the target, the next block keeps the same work. After 4 weeks without the session, it starts again from the first step. These numbers are app choices.
How long a hard run gets
Hard running grows about 5 min a block: your longest hard work in the last 28 days, plus one step. A hard run you set yourself, such as run club, follows the same step. If it is longer, the part past the step is easy for now. Continuous hard running stops at 30 min, and hard work past that is run steady, at about marathon pace. These are app choices, not study results. The one limit from a study is on a run's total distance: a 2025 study of 5,205 runners (Frandsen et al., British Journal of Sports Medicine) linked a run more than 10% longer than your longest run of the last 30 days with more overuse injuries. It is an association, not proof. Coach never shortens a run club route for it. It tells you when a route is longer than that.
Run club routes
If your club runs routes of set lengths, tell Coach the lengths. A route cannot grow 5 min at a time, so Coach builds the hard time in your other hard run first. The longer route stays easy until your hard running is within 5 min of its time. Then the route is your hard run for the week: 1 mi easy, some miles steady, then easy to the finish. The steady miles start at 3 and grow 1 mi a block when you run them on target, up to what keeps 75% of your week's time easy. They stay the same after a block you missed or found too easy. If you chose structured work, the route has mile repeats instead. Coach reads the steady miles only to decide whether to add a mile. A club run never makes your next hard run repeat or get easier. These steps are app choices.
Why plans use it
Plans have up to 2 each week, never on back-to-back days, with easy days around them.
When runs miss their target
If 2 hard runs in a row are slower than planned or cut short, Coach changes the next one. When your fatigue is low, it is the same session again. When your fatigue is building, it is an easier session, and the week does not get longer. If 2 hard runs in a row feel easy at their pace, Coach plans a threshold test to check your paces. Hot days and run club sessions do not count. Coach chooses these responses to balance training with your recovery.
Not the same as
Long run: easy effort, for longer. A quality session is short and hard.