What Is Training Preferences?
Training Preferences are a powerful way to customise your running plan to give you control over your Training Volume (how much your run) and Difficulty (how hard your sessions are). Keeping your training structured and sustainable, you can now adjust these factors independently so you can progress in a way that works best for you.
For example, you can reduce the number of structured long runs, tweak the intensity of harder sessions, or set a cap on your maximum long run distance.
What is Training Volume?
Your training volume determines how much running you do each week, based on your ability, availability and training goals. You can choose from three settings:
Progressive: For runners who want high weekly mileage and peak performance. Choosing Progressive means you’ll get more training each week, while still building fitness safely and sustainably. It’s perfect if you’re working towards a key goal or event and enjoy a fuller schedule, just make sure you’re also giving yourself plenty of recovery time.
Steady: For runners who want medium weekly mileage and build consistent progress with a more balanced weekly schedule. Great if you want to build fitness steadily while keeping training a little more manageable alongside everyday life.
Gradual: For runners who want lower weekly mileage, fewer weekly sessions, minimal disruption and gentle progression. Perfect if you’re juggling a busy schedule, easing back into training or simply prefer a lighter weekly commitment.
For even more control, Advanced Customisation lets you fine-tune your training volume by adjusting the maximum length of longs runs, easy runs and hard sessions separately.
What is Difficulty?
Your Difficulty determines how intense your workouts are. You can select from three settings:
Challenging: For higher intensity and more demanding hard runs. This will keep you working hard, with a strong focus on improving your speed and endurance.
Balanced: A middle ground between performance and recovery. This still includes plenty of challenge, but keeps workouts a little more manageable to support recovery around busier lifestyles.
Comfortable: For lower intensity runs and prioritising consistency and sustainability. This is ideal if you’re easing back into training, managing fatigue or simply prefer workouts that feel more achievable.
Advanced Customisation allows you to further refine the difficulty of your plan by adjusting the number of hard runs per week, the intensity of those runs, and the structure and difficulty of your long runs too.
How Can I Access Training Preferences?
When creating a new plan you’ll be prompted to set your Training Preference during setup.
For an existing plan:
Go to Plan
Tap Manage Plan
Scroll to Training Preferences
If you can’t see Training Preferences:
Make sure your app is updated to version v7.2 or later
Make sure your plan is updated to the latest version
Training Preferences are available on most plans except New To Running, Return to Running, and older-style plans like Hyrox, Functional Fitness, Post-Natal, Post-Injury, Post-Race Recovery plans.
How Do I Adjust Training Volume?
To change your Training Volume for your plan as a whole:
Go to Plan → Tap Manage Plan
Tap into Training Volume
Choose between Progressive (high weekly mileage), Steady (medium weekly mileage) and Gradual (low weekly mileage).
For more control, toggle on Advanced Customisation to adjust maximum distances for your runs (easy, long and hard runs)
Tap Save. Once saved, Runna will automatically update your plan to match your preferred settings.
To undo or reverse changes, you can go through the same steps above and choose the previous settings you had.
How Do I Adjust Difficulty?
To change Difficulty for your plan as a whole:
Go to Plan → Tap Manage Plan
Tap into Difficulty
Choose between Challenging (higher intensity runs), Balanced (medium intensity runs) and Comfortable (lower intensity runs).
For more control, toggle on Advanced Customisation to refine hard run quantity and intensity
Tap Save. Once saved, Runna will automatically update your plan to match your preferred settings.
To undo or reverse changes, you can go through the same steps above and choose the previous settings you had.
How Does Adjusting My Training Preferences Impact My Plan?
Changing your Training Volume will affect your total weekly mileage up or down
Changing Difficulty will affect the number and structure of your hard runs i.e. how much time you spend running at a faster pace during hard workouts and structured long runs in your plan (e.g. reps, intervals or duration).
Training Volume or Difficulty changes won’t affect the pace targets assigned throughout your plan, as your pace targets are based on your estimated race time.
For example, lowering your Difficulty may result in fewer reps in an interval workout, but the target paces for those intervals will remain the same.
Note: Strength, Yoga, Pilates and Stretch & Stability sessions are not affected by Training Preferences.
How can I use Training Preferences to adjust my plan if it feels too hard or too easy?
The training preference settings you adjust will depend on what makes the plan easy or hard for you: sessions feeling too intense or too easy (Difficulty) is different from your mileage building too quickly or too slowly (Training Volume).
If your plan/sessions feel too easy:
Set your Training Volume to Steady or Progressive to increase how much you run and how fast your mileage builds up. Through Advanced Customisation, you can also set longer maximum distances for your easy, long and hard runs.
Set your Difficulty to Balanced or Challenging to increase the intensity of harder workouts. Through Advanced Customisation, you can set a higher number of hard runs per week, choose a higher frequency of structured long runs, and refine difficulty for your hard sessions.
If your plan/sessions feel too hard:
Set your Training Volume to Gradual or Steady to decrease how much you run and how fast your mileage builds up. Through Advanced Customisation, you can also set shorter maximum distances for your easy, long and hard runs.
Set your Difficulty to Balanced or Comfortable to lower the intensity of harder workouts. Through Advanced Customisation, you can set a lower number of hard runs per week, choose a lower frequency of structured long runs, and reduce difficulty for your hard sessions.
If adjusting Training Preferences alone didn’t help adjusting your plan intensity or your plan doesn't support this feature, see How Runna Calculates Your Mileage — and How to Adjust It for other settings like Running Ability and plan end date.
How do I undo/revert changes I made to Training Preferences?
At the moment, there isn’t a specific button to revert changes made through Training Preferences. You’ll have to manually adjust Training Preferences (Plan → Manage plan → Training Volume or Difficulty) and choose the previous settings you had.
FAQs
Why can't I find Training Preferences?
You may not see Training Preferences for one of the following reasons:
App version: Make sure you’re using version 7.2 or later
Plan version: If you created your plan before Training Preferences launched, you may need to update your plan version to access this feature.
Plan type: Training Preferences is currently available for race plans and distance-based goal plans (e.g. 10km plans, marathons). It is not yet available for New To Running, Return to Running, and older-style plans like Hyrox, Functional Fitness, Post-Natal, Post-Injury and Post-Race Recovery plans.
On a plan that doesn't support Training Preferences and want to ease intensity? You can still adjust by running fewer days, ensuring you are running to a conversational effort, spacing sessions out to avoid back-to-back runs, or pushing your end date out to give remaining weeks more breathing room: Plan → Manage Plan → End Date.
Can I change my Training Preferences mid-plan?
Yes! You can set them at the beginning, or tweak them throughout. Each time you change them, Runna will regenerate your plan with your new settings. However, you may be prevented from making certain updates if they will prevent you from reaching your goal. For example, in some shorter race plans, our lower mileage options will not work as we need to build you up to your race distance effectively.
Can I revert back to default settings?
Yes, but there isn’t a one-click reset. To return to Training Preferences defaults:
Set Volume to Progressive
Set Difficulty to Challenging
Turn Advanced Customisation OFF
What’s the difference between Training Volume and Plan Difficulty?
Training Volume determines how high your weekly mileage builds, and how quickly we build you up to it.
Plan Difficulty affects the number and intensity of speed-based workouts each week, including “hard” sessions like hills, intervals, and tempo runs, as well as the number of long runs that include pace targets.
What Training Volume and Difficulty do you recommend?
To get the most out of your training, Runna recommends selecting ‘Progressive’ for Training Volume and ‘Challenging’ for Plan Difficulty. These are the default settings, so if you don’t make any changes after building your plan, they’ll be applied automatically.
Why can’t I see the advanced customisation setting?
Advanced Customisation options will only appear if changing them would have a meaningful impact on your plan. If you don’t see a specific option, it means adjusting those factors wouldn’t have a noticeable effect on the structure of your plan.
How do these changes affect the estimated race times at the end of my plan?
Your estimated race times will update over time based on the Training Volume and Plan Difficulty settings you choose. Harder settings generally lead to faster improvement. Choosing the most demanding settings can lead to around 10% faster progress compared to the default plan. That said, results will vary greatly from runner to runner and depend on factors like your training tolerance, nutrition, sleep, and recovery.
Moreover, the effect can also vary depending on your running experience. Newer runners often see bigger improvements from any structured training, but more experienced runners may benefit from slightly more demanding settings to see the same level of progress.
Will my adjusted Training Preferences carry over to other or future plans?
No, you will have to adjust your Training Preferences on a plan-by-plan basis. You’ll need to customise them each time.
Do Training Preferences affect my Runna Strength or Yoga / Pilates / Stretch sessions?
No - Runna Strength, Yoga, Pilates, and Stretch & Stability sessions are independent of Training Preferences and won’t be affected by any changes you make.
Got further questions?
Feel free to reach out via the in-app support channel and we'll do our best to help!