Types of training
Evidence: moderate
The individual run types rest on well-established physiology, but how best to combine them is far less settled and varies by coach and system. The reliable part is the shape: most of a week is easy running, with a small selection from the harder types below, chosen to suit the runner and the event.
Distance training is built from a handful of run types layered on a base of easy mileage. The names vary between coaches and systems, but the underlying intensities map onto the physiology: easy aerobic running, work at lactate threshold, and work near VO₂max, with race-specific work bridging them near competition. The categories below are not a checklist to complete each week; they are a menu.
Mostly easy
- Easy and recovery runs. Conversational-effort running that forms the great majority of training volume and drives most of the aerobic adaptation. See training volume versus intensity. Recovery runs are simply the easiest of these, used to add gentle volume the day after hard work.
- The long run. A longer easy run that builds endurance and durability. See the long run.
- Strides. Short, relaxed accelerations of 15 to 20 seconds, added to easy days to maintain mechanics and leg speed without meaningful fatigue.
Around threshold
- Tempo and threshold runs. Sustained or broken running at lactate threshold, “comfortably hard”, to raise the pace that can be held for long periods. The controlled, repeated version is double-threshold work.
- Steady and progression runs. Runs held at a moderate aerobic effort, or that finish faster than they start. Useful in moderation, but the zone most prone to the grey-zone trap of being neither easy nor hard.
- Marathon-pace runs. Race-specific work for marathoners, rehearsing goal pace and fuelling, central to the Canova approach.
Near VO₂max and faster
- Intervals. Hard repeated efforts near VO₂max to develop maximal aerobic power. See interval training.
- Fartlek. Looser, by-feel surges, a flexible bridge to and from formal intervals. See fartlek.
- Hill repeats. Hard uphill efforts that build strength and power with less impact than flat sprinting; a strength-and-speed stimulus in one.
- Reps and speed work. Short, fast repetitions with full recovery, training pure speed, economy and running mechanics rather than the aerobic system.
How they fit together
The art is selecting a few of these, not all. A typical week is mostly easy running plus one or two harder sessions drawn from the threshold and VO₂max groups, with strides and perhaps a long run, sharpening toward race-specific work as a race nears. Which to choose depends on the event, the individual and the training philosophy followed. Beginners need almost none of the hard types at first; see running for beginners.