Frequently Asked Questions

Stride Coach generates personalized running training plans. Specialized engines work together to build a safe, progressive plan around your experience, schedule, and race goal — completely free, with no account.

When you enter your race distance, goal, experience level, and available days, our engines calculate a safe mileage progression, assign appropriate workouts, set your pace zones, and validate everything through a safety framework. The result is a week-by-week plan tailored to you.

No. There's nothing to sign up for and nothing to pay. Enter your race details and you get your full plan immediately. It lives at a permanent link you can bookmark or share.

Plans work best when you have enough weeks to build up safely. For a 5K, 8 to 12 weeks is ideal. For a half marathon, 12 to 16 weeks. For a marathon, 16 to 20 weeks. Starting earlier gives your body more time to adapt gradually.

Every plan has a permanent web address. Send the link to anyone — a friend, a coach, a running group — and they can view the full plan without logging in to anything.

Plan addresses describe the plan itself (race, weeks, experience, goal). The same inputs always produce the same plan, so your link never changes or expires — and two runners with identical inputs share the same plan.

Yes. You can download your plan as a PDF or print it directly from the plan page. Bookmarking the link works too — the plan is always there.

Just create a new plan with the updated details. It takes seconds, and your old plan stays available at its link if you want to compare.

Step-back weeks reduce your mileage by about 20 to 30% to let your body absorb the training from previous weeks. They follow a 3-1 or 2-1 pattern (2 to 3 weeks of building, then 1 easier week). They're not lost time. They're when your body actually gets stronger.

Hard efforts (tempo runs, intervals, long runs) stress your muscles, joints, and cardiovascular system. Easy days between them allow recovery and adaptation. Back-to-back hard days significantly increase injury risk, so Stride always separates them.

The taper is a planned reduction in mileage during the final 2 to 3 weeks before your race. Your fitness is already built. The taper lets your body rest and recover so you arrive at the start line fresh and ready to perform.

It's the total distance across all your runs for that week. Stride builds this number up progressively, following safe increase limits, so your body can handle the load without breaking down.

A comfortable, conversational-pace run that builds your aerobic base. You should be able to hold a full conversation. Easy runs make up the majority of your training and are essential for recovery between harder efforts. Don't underestimate them. They're doing real work.

A run at a moderate effort, slightly faster than easy but still controlled. Steady runs improve your aerobic efficiency without the fatigue of a hard workout. Think of it as a comfortable push.

A sustained effort at a "comfortably hard" pace, typically for 20 to 40 minutes. Tempo runs train your body to clear lactate more efficiently, helping you hold a faster pace for longer. You can speak in short phrases but not full sentences.

Intervals run at or near your lactate threshold, the pace where your body is just managing the effort. These improve your ability to sustain hard efforts. Typically structured as repeats (e.g., 3x10 minutes) with short recovery jogs between.

High-intensity intervals that push your maximum oxygen uptake. Usually 3 to 5 minute repeats at a hard effort with equal recovery time. These are the hardest workouts in your plan and make a big difference in race fitness. They should feel genuinely hard.

Your longest run of the week, done at an easy to moderate pace. Long runs build endurance, teach your body to burn fat for fuel, and prepare you mentally for race distance. They're the cornerstone of distance training.

If you provide a recent race result or goal time, Stride uses the VDOT formula to estimate your fitness and calculate training paces. Each zone (easy, steady, marathon pace, threshold, VO2max) is set as a percentage of your marathon pace.

Training paces don't meaningfully change over a small difference in goal time, so Stride works in 1-minute increments for 5K and 10K goals and 5-minute increments for half marathon and marathon goals. It keeps plans simple and means runners with near-identical goals get the same well-tested plan.

If you selected "just finish" as your goal without a specific time target, Stride uses RPE-based guidance instead of pace targets. This is intentional. Without a race time to work from, prescribing specific paces wouldn't be accurate. RPE lets you train by feel, which is more appropriate for your goal.

It means running slowly enough to speak in complete sentences without gasping. If you can't talk comfortably, slow down. Most runners run their easy days too fast. If it feels almost too easy, you're probably in the right zone.

It means your weekly mileage should never increase by more than 10% from the previous week. This is one of the most well-established guidelines in running for preventing overuse injuries. Stride enforces this automatically, so you don't need to calculate it yourself.

Your cardiovascular fitness improves faster than your tendons, ligaments, and bones can adapt. Increasing mileage too quickly is the leading cause of running injuries. The safety limits may feel conservative, but they keep you running consistently, which matters more than any single big week.

Multiple layers: the 10% weekly increase rule, mandatory step-back weeks, no back-to-back hard days, and progressive long run limits. These constraints are enforced as the final validation step of every plan and cannot be overridden.

No. Discomfort during hard workouts is normal, but sharp, persistent, or worsening pain is a signal to stop. A training plan can't replace medical advice. If something hurts, take a rest day and consult a healthcare professional if it persists.