No matter how committed you are to training, every runner goes through weeks where things feel a bit off.
Life gets hectic, your energy dips, you might be under the weather, or you start to notice small aches that don’t feel serious but do make running feel harder than usual. This is where listening to your body, and adjusting your plan accordingly, becomes one of the most valuable skills you can develop as a runner.
The good news is, you can adapt your training to what your body and your life need right now, without losing momentum.
How to Adjust Your Plan
Listening to small aches early can help prevent bigger issues later. If something feels off, ease back in training and wait until things are feeling better.
To take the pressure off, you can adjust your plan to build in some recovery and reduce the intensity when you return to training. Simply head to Manage Plan in the Runna App → Adapt your plan → Not Feeling 100% → Add Adjustment, then follow the prompts.
Think of this as a conversation between you, your body, and your training. Your plan isn’t a rigid schedule and it’s incredibly important to listen to your body to make sure you get the most out of your training.
Important: If your pain is sharp, persistent, worsening, or affecting daily movement, check in with your physio or healthcare provider. Our guidance is coaching advice and not a substitute for medical advice.
Choose How Long You Want the Adjustment to Last
You can adjust your plan for up to 14 days. This gives you space to let those minor aches settle. This isn’t taking a step back. It’s training intelligently.
You can adapt your training by:
Reducing difficulty
Doing easy and long runs only
Doing short easy runs only
Not running for a bit
Select How you Want to Return to Full Training
Once your adjustment period ends, you can choose the pace at which you’d like to rebuild:
Slowly: A gentle return with extra easy running and reduced load. Ideal if you’ve been feeling under the weather or your body needs a bit more care. This is ideal if you’ve had any minor discomfort or aches prior to adjusting your plan.
Balanced: A steady progression back to full training. Great when you’ve had a lighter week due to work, travel, or general fatigue.
Quickly: A faster transition back to your normal plan. Perfect for situations where life got busy, but your fitness and energy still feel solid.
Choosing your return style helps ensure the plan meets you exactly where you are. If anything feels off, adjust again. Don’t overdo it, you know yourself.
Why Adjusting Your Plan Matters
Your body doesn’t know the difference between stress from training and stress from life. Work pressure, reduced sleep, travel, poor recovery, or feeling run-down all impact how well you can adapt to your sessions.
When your ability to recover is reduced, pushing through high-intensity training can make running feel disproportionately difficult. This is often when niggles appear and fatigue starts to build.
Making small, smart changes during these moments protects your progress, keeps training enjoyable, and helps you stay consistent over the long term.
Keep Your Body Moving With Mobility Work
When you scale back your running, it can be helpful to keep some gentle movement in your week. Mobility work such as our Yoga, Pilates, and Stretch & Stability sessions are ideal here. They’re low-impact, supportive, and help you stay loose without adding extra load.
These sessions maintain joint mobility, reduce stiffness, and build the kind of balance and control that underpin healthy running. They’re simple ways to stay connected to your routine while giving your body the space it needs to recover.
You can add these in the Manage Plan section of your Runna app.
Final Thoughts
Aches and niggles are common when you're building consistency, increasing running volume or adding intensity. What sets strong, resilient runners apart isn’t that they never feel discomfort, it’s how they respond when something doesn’t feel quite right.
Adjusting your plan is about rolling with the highs and adapting to the lows, giving your body what it needs so you can keep running not just today, but for months and years to come!
If you ever have concerns about persistent or worsening pain, or anything that feels more serious, check in with a physio. Otherwise, use your Runna tools to guide your training, support your body, and keep your running journey steady, sustainable, and enjoyable!