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What a session is made of
Every run in your plan is built from steps — each with a job, a length, and sometimes a pace to hold.
Every run in your plan is written out in full — not “intervals,” but exactly how long, how fast, and how much rest. Knowing how that is put together makes the rest of your plan easier to read, and makes it much easier to ask for changes.
A session is an ordered list of steps. Each step says three things.
What each step tells you
Its job. A step is a warmup, a cooldown, the main body of the run, the hard part, a recovery jog, or standing rest. This is not decoration — it decides how the step is judged afterwards. Nobody is marked down for the pace of their warmup.
How it ends. After a time, after a distance, or when you press the lap button. A cruise interval that ends at six minutes and a mile repeat that ends at a mile are different instructions, and your plan stores which one it meant.
What to hold, if anything. Some steps name a pace or a zone to run in; others, like a recovery jog, just say to go easy. Steps with nothing to hold are not scored on pace.
Steps can also repeat as a group, and groups can sit inside other groups — which is how “3 sets of 4 × 400m” is written without spelling out twelve reps.
A whole easy run is one step
This surprises people. An easy run is a single step, its job is “main,” and it targets a zone rather than an exact pace.
That is deliberate. A zone says anywhere in here is right. A precise pace target would mean running slightly slower than planned on an easy day counts against you, which is the opposite of what an easy day is for.
Why the detail matters
Because it is written out step by step, your coach can change one piece without rebuilding the session. Shorten the recoveries, keep everything else. Drop the last rep. Move the whole thing to Friday. You are editing a specific part, not starting again.
Your paces come from your own running
The paces in a session are not generic. A step that names a pace or a zone is resolved against your current fitness, so a session written six weeks ago may prescribe slightly different numbers today. If you asked for specific numbers instead, those stay exactly as you gave them.
Reading one
Ask for any day and you will get the session in full — the steps in order, what each is for, how long it runs, and the pace or zone attached. If something does not make sense, ask why it is there. The reasoning behind a session is part of what your coach knows, not a black box.
Ask your coach
“What's the workout on Thursday?”
“Walk me through tomorrow's session.”
Related
- Asking for the workout you want — Describe a session the way you would say it out loud — reps, paces, recoveries — and your coach builds it into your plan.
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