How to train: pace, effort and the rest

Run slowly enough to talk in full sentences. If you can only get a few words out, slow down, or walk until you can talk again.

It works because comfortable speech stops at about the first ventilatory threshold, the point where breathing starts to climb. No watch needed.

About four fifths of your running stays easy. Well-trained endurance athletes train this way, around 80% at low intensity.

Easy days are what let the few harder minutes count, and they are where most of the fitness is built.

Planned walking breaks from the start, not walking when you have to. The running parts are easy, the walking parts brisk.

The plan grows the running minutes each week until the walking disappears. Walk-run is also a good way to finish a long race.

At the end of an easy run: about 20 seconds of quick, relaxed running, then walk back until your breathing settles. Six of them.

They teach your legs to move faster without the cost of a hard workout.

"Comfortably hard" for the middle 20 minutes: only a few words at a time, effort 6 to 7. Easy before and after.

Used once a week from the marathon rung up. Never on the day after a long run.

The same easy pace the whole way. Finish feeling you could go a little further.

It is also where you practice everything for race day: shoes, socks, food and drink.

Add a little each week and make every fourth week lighter. In novice runners, adding more than 30% to weekly distance over two weeks was linked to more overuse injuries such as knee pain and shin splints.

If your knees ache, try about 5% more steps a minute at the same speed. In 45 runners, a 5% rise cut the energy absorbed at the knee by about 20%, and 10% cut it by about 34%.

Five minutes of walking or very easy jogging before every run, and the same after.

Squats, lunges, calf raises and a plank. The last two or three reps of each set should feel like work. Strong legs handle the miles better.

For events of 90 minutes or more, the usual carb loading is 10 to 12 g per kg of body weight a day for the 36 to 48 hours before. Practice all of it in training first; your gut learns too.

Drink when you are thirsty, not on a schedule. Drinking far beyond thirst in long events can cause exercise-associated hyponatremia, dangerously low blood sodium.

Over the last two weeks (three before a marathon or longer), cut distance by roughly 40 to 60%. Keep the number of runs and some short faster running. Your plan does this automatically.

A short night, low energy, or a resting pulse well above your usual means an easy day. Pain means a walk. Chest pain, fainting, or a racing or skipping heartbeat means stop and see a doctor. Your plan reads all of this and changes the day for you.

Heat raises your heart rate at the same pace. Go early, slow down, and let the talk test set the pace rather than the watch.