I've been scheduled a short run. Can I do longer?

While it can be tempting to run longer when you feel good, it's important to understand the role of short runs in your plan. Here’s a look at the science behind them and the smart way to add extra distance when you need to.

The 'Why' (it's a balancing act)

An important consideration is that TrainAsONE is not just scheduling a short run, but rather it is determining a combination of runs, the result of each affecting the benefits and risks for all following runs. The whole plan is a balancing act of the calculated benefits (of running) vs risk of injury. The former is based upon patterns of training that have demonstrated improved performance and better race times, whereas the latter is derived from user injury records and research papers.

In general, when a short run is scheduled at a time when you REALLY REALLY feel you can do more, the injury prevention aspect is probably winning - the system is calculating that potential performance gain is outweighed by the increase in injury risk.

This feeling of being able to do "more" often stems from the differing adaptation rates of your body's systems. Your cardiovascular system (heart, lungs, and blood vessels) adapts to training stimulus relatively quickly. After just a few weeks of consistent running, your breathing gets easier and your heart rate lowers. When you feel you can easily run longer, it's often your cardiovascular system talking.

However, your structural system (your bones, tendons, ligaments, and joints) takes significantly longer to adapt and strengthen. These tissues require consistent, progressive mechanical loading over months to become resilient enough to safely handle longer distances. Short runs provide the necessary 'time on feet' to condition and strengthen your structural integrity without pushing those slower-adapting tissues past their breaking point.

An 'issue' here is that even with increasing the duration of the run considerably the performance gain is probably marginal, yet the injury risk may rapidly rise. However... even doubling the injury risk might be acceptable to an individual. Our ideal target is ~ 3% seven day risk during active training, and doubling to 6% still means that 94% of the time 'you will be fine', and so as an individual I'm happy: 'I do more running, which I think must be doing me a whole lot of good, and I'm not getting injured'. Unless, of course, you're one of the 6%. And as a population of runners, if all users were to do this then we would have doubled the number of people getting injured.

At TrainAsONE we see the needed system enhancement is information feedback and enabling informed decision making - the system should provide information on performance gains and risks, doing likewise for any run / plan variation that you or the system wishes to investigate (a complex piece of development with little to no existing science to fallback on, but we're working on it).

The Run Back Feature

We understand that sometimes you may need or wish to extend a run - whether it's just to get home or because you're simply feeling great. The best way to handle this is by enabling the Run Back setting.

This feature automatically adds an 'open' easy running step to the end of your scheduled workouts. This means that after you complete your main session, your device will continue recording at an easy effort until you manually stop it.