The Running Thread - 2026

[sandam1]

For a very long time I did 30/30 and 60/30, and when I started trying to extend my intervals I went to 90/30 and then 2:00/30 but I never got in the groove of it. I found I could to 2/1 and be just as fast if not faster than 2:00/30. Maybe I'll mix this back in now and see how it goes.

Based on this answer, I'm going to ask another question - what is your purpose behind increasing your run intervals? I ask this because I know that a lot of people think that the key faster paces is lengthening the run interval and it doesn't quite work like that. I know that I can get the same pace using anywhere between a 15 to 45 second run and 30 second walk. Obviously, I waste a lot of extra energy doing a 45 second run so I want to do the shortest run interval that is both comfortable (i.e. not sprinting) and gets me the pace that I want. By your statement, it seems like you should be able to get the same pace at 60/30 as you do at 2:00/1:00.

Now yes, at some point if you want faster paces, you will have to run longer, but I only increase my run intervals when I cannot hit the paces comfortably using my current run intervals.

Not sure why I didn't consider that.

Because runners like numbers that end in 5's and 0's. I know that someone said that at one point Jeff Galloway was using something like a 22 second run and 17 second walk and just the thought made me - and several other people that were part of the conversation - twitch. I also realize that going from a 15 second run to a 30 second run, I was doubling my run time. Well, of course, it was going to be hard. Bumping it up by 5 seconds at a time was much more do-able.

 

[FFigawi]

Ooh! Where are you diving?

Indonesia. 12 days on a liveaboard in Raja Ampat, a week in Bali, and 2.5 weeks in Komodo getting my instructor certification done. Can’t wait!

 

[Novatrix]

Indonesia. 12 days on a liveaboard in Raja Ampat, a week in Bali, and 2.5 weeks in Komodo getting my instructor certification done. Can’t wait!

Wow, what a bucket list trip! Enjoy all the creatures and sights big and small!

 

[Naomeri]

Because runners like numbers that end in 5's and 0's.

Because running math is hard enough to do without bringing weird numbers into it

 

[FFigawi]

Because running math is hard enough to do without bringing weird numbers into it

Running math is especially hard while running. Many years ago, I ran Comrades with a friend of mine. Comrades has a strict 12-hour gun-to-gun cutoff time, making it very important to know the time and distance remaining, and be able to calculate that required pace compared to your current pace. The race helpfully has a sign every kilometer showing the distance to go. Okay, not very helpful when the first sign you see during the day reads 87, but when you get to 37, it's nice to know. So there we were, two MBAs trying to figure out if we have 37km remaining, are we going to make it in time? We do the easy part first and subtract our elapsed time on our watches from 12 hours. Then comes the hard part of turning 37km into X miles, which is not a nice round number, and then dividing the also not round number of minutes remaining by whatever we came up with for X to get a pace. By the time we thought we had it almost worked out, the 36km sign popped up and we had to do this all over again. Needless to say, this pattern continued for several km until we got to 30. That's basically 3 10k we told ourselves. At 70 minutes per 10k, that's 3.5 hours. We finally had numbers we could work with. So yeah, running math is hard.