We’re excited to introduce Training Preferences, a powerful new way to customise your running plan. We've replaced the previous ‘Optimal, Balanced, Lifestyle’ settings to give you full control over your Training Volume and Difficulty—adjusting them independently to suit your needs.
With Training Preferences, you can fine-tune your plan by reducing the number of structured long runs, adjusting the intensity of hard sessions, or capping your max long run distance. This update gives you greater flexibility while keeping your training structured and sustainable, so you can progress at a pace that works best for you.
What is Training Preferences?
Training Preferences is a feature in the Runna app that allows you to adjust your Training Volume and Difficulty independently to better align with your goals and lifestyle.
Training Volume
Training volume determines how much running you do each week, based on your overall workload. You can choose from three settings:
Progressive: A high-volume plan for those looking to push their limits and achieve peak performance.
Steady: A medium-volume plan that balances steady progress with sustainable training.
Gradual: A lower-volume approach with minimal disruption to daily life, offering gentle progression to suit busy schedules and diverse commitments.
For even more control, advanced customisation lets you fine-tune your volume by adjusting the maximum distance for your hard/easy runs and long runs separately.
Difficulty
Difficulty determines how intense your workouts are. You can select from three settings:
Challenging: Runs at this level are designed to keep you working hard, with a strong focus on improving your speed and endurance.
Balanced: A well-rounded option for those who want more demanding runs while still keeping a balance with recovery.
Comfortable: A gentler approach, offering runs that prioritise consistency over challenge, allowing you to keep moving while minimising strain.
Advanced customisation allows you to refine difficulty further by adjusting the number of hard runs per week, the intensity of those runs, and the structure and challenge level of long runs.
Overall, Training Preferences empowers you to take greater control over your running plan while ensuring a balanced and sustainable approach to training.
How Does Training Preferences Work?
Here’s how you can use Training Preferences:
1. Accessing Training Preferences:
For a plan you are currently training with:
Go to ‘Plan’ tab in the app.
Select ‘Manage Plan’ > ‘Training Preferences’
For a new plan you are creating:
The option to customise your Training Preferences will appear as an option when you are setting up your plan.
If ‘Training Preferences’ isn’t available under ‘Manage Plan’ or as an option when you are creating a new plan you may need to update the version of your plan first. See this article on how to update your plan version.
Click into either ‘Training Volume’ or ‘Difficulty’ to start making adjustments.
2. Adjusting Training Volume
Move the slider between ‘Progressive’, ‘Steady’ and ‘Gradual’ to arrive at your desired training volume.
If you want to further customise your plan, toggle on ‘Advanced Customisation’ and adjust the maximum length of your long runs and the maximum length of your easy/hard runs.
Click ‘Save’ to ensure any changes you made to Training Volume are applied to your plan.
3. Adjusting Difficulty
Achieve your preferred difficulty by toggling between ‘Challenging’, ‘Balanced’ and ‘Comfortable’.
Access additional customisation options by toggling on ‘Advanced Customisation’ and adjust the number of hard runs, hard run difficulty, long run structure and long run difficulty.
Click ‘Save’ to ensure any changes you made to Difficulty are applied to your plan.
4. Plan Adjustments
Once you have saved your changes to Training Volume and Difficulty, Runna will update your plan by adapting it to your preferred settings.
How This Impacts Your Plan
The adjustments made in Training Preferences will have no impact on the paces Runna has provided you throughout your plan.
Any adjustments you make to your Training Preferences will impact your weekly overall milage throughout your plan and the amount of time you spend at a faster pace during your hard runs or your structured long runs.
For example, reducing your Difficulty could result in fewer reps during your interval workout, but it will not impact the paces of your intervals.
FAQs
What if I don’t see ‘Training Preferences’ as an option under ‘Manage Plan’ in my app?
You may not see Training Preferences due to one of the following reasons:
App Version: Ensure you’re using version 7.2 or later.
Plan Version: If you created your plan before we rolled out this feature, you may need to update your plan before you have access to Training Preferences. See here for information on how to update your plan.
Plan Type: Currently, Training Preferences is only available for race plans and distance-based goal plans, like 10km improvement plans, or marathons. It is not yet available for New to Running or Return to Running.
How do I adjust my Training Preferences?
You can access your training preferences in the 'Manage Plan' part of the 'Plan' tab.
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, it will regenerate your plan and you will be able to flick through and see if the changes feel right for you!
What’s the difference between Training Volume and Plan Difficulty?
Training Volume is about how high your mileage peaks, and how fast we build you up to there.
Plan Difficulty is about the quantity and difficulty of the speed workouts you get each week, including 'hard' sessions, like hills, intervals and tempo, and the number of long runs that contain sections with pace targets.
What do you recommend I set my Training Volume and Difficulty to?
Runna recommends that you set your Training Volume to ‘Progressive’ and your Difficulty to ‘Challenging’. These are the default settings for Training Preferences, meaning if you make no changes to your Training Preferences after your plan is built those will be your settings.
Why can’t I see a specific advanced customisation setting as an option?
Advanced customisation options will only appear if changing them will have a meaningful impact on your plan. If it doesn’t appear as an option under your advanced customisation setting that means it is a metric that won’t have a meaningful impact on your plan.
I adjusted my Training Preferences, but I don’t like how it’s changed my plan and want to go back to the default settings. Is there a way to undo my changes to my plan?
Currently, we don’t have a specific undo button to revert changes you have made to your plan through Training Preferences. The best option is to:
Manually change your Training Volume back to ‘Progressive’ and your Difficulty back to ‘Challenging’.
If you turn off the ‘Advanced customisation’ toggle it will revert back to the default advanced settings.
How do these changes affect the estimated race times at the end of my plan?
Your estimated race times adjust based on your selected Training Volume and Difficulty settings, with different weightings applied. Settings that increase the intensity of hard runs have a greater impact on improvement.
The effect also varies based on your running experience—newer runners typically see greater improvements from any structured training, while more experienced runners see smaller gains, especially with easier settings.
In general, selecting the hardest training settings leads to approximately 10% faster progress compared to the default plan.
Will the training preferences I set up for this plan carry over to other plans I set up in Runna in the future?
No, you will have to adjust your Training Preferences on a plan-by-plan basis.
How does this work if I want to keep my Runna Strength and/or Mobility sessions?
Runna strength and mobility pilates are independent of this feature and will not be impacted by changes to training preference.