10 Big Tips for Getting the Most of Your RunDot Training

Carrie Tollefson: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the RunDot podcast. Today I have two RunDot insiders who will give us 10 big tips for getting the most out of your RunDot training. We try to make sure all of our RunDot podcast episodes provide good coaching for all sorts of runners, whether you train with RunDot or not. But today is a big episode. For those of you in our audience who do train with RunDot, I'm joined by Vanessa Ronksley, who is a longtime TriDot athlete who leads both the TriDot and RunDot ambassador programs. And Andrew Harley. He's a producer for the RunDot and TriDot podcasts, and he's been training with TriDot since 2018. And I'm Carrie Tollefson, Olympian, broadcaster, and your guide to the world of RunDot. We treat the show like any good workout. We'll start with a warmup question, settle into our main set conversation, and then wind things down by having our coaches answer an audience question on the cooldown. Lots of good stuff today, so let's get after it.

Announcer: This is the RunDot podcast, the running show that brings you world class coaching with every conversation. Let's get started with today's warmup.

Warmup Question

Carrie: All right, you guys, you ready for the warmup?

Andrew: Absolutely.

Carrie: All right, here we go. What was the first run event you ever participated in? And I'm not talking about the mile in middle school, even elementary school. I'm talking about the first event you paid for. You got a bib number and you showed up and did your thing. So, Vanessa, let's hear from you first.

Vanessa: All righty. So my first run was actually the Calgary Police half marathon. And I don't know why I decided to do a half marathon. This was a long time ago and I signed up for a class because I was not a runner and I did it through a local run store and then, you know, did the training, was super ready. I had a specific time in mind that I wanted to execute. And then in true Vanessa fashion, which is to start everything at the same time, I was like, one week before the race, I was like, hey, there's a Bikram yoga challenge. It's 30 days long, so why don't I join that? So instead of doing, you know, the proper taper and recovery, I ramped up my training. Like I did an hour and a half of Bikram yoga every day one week prior to the race. And I started out great in the race and, and then things kind of, you know, fell off the rails and I was in a lot of pain by the end of the race and I finished, but it was not close to the time that I was expecting or wanting. So that was my first race.

Carrie: That's fun. How about you, Andrew?

Andrew: Yeah, so I was like the runner who didn't see the need of doing, like, why would I pay 50 bucks or 30 bucks or 100 bucks to go run a 5k or a 10k when I can go run a 5k or 10k on my own right on Saturday? Like, I was that guy who just like, I liked running every day after work, but didn't see the point of doing, like, an organized race and paying for it. And so there was a guy in our church who worked for racetrack gas stations. If you're in the United States, racetrack gas stations are all over the place. You might be familiar with that company. They're all over Texas, where I live. And so anyway, so racetrack was organizing a 5K in Arlington, Texas. And so through this friend of mine, he posted on Facebook, hey, my company's doing this 5K. Here's a code. If you punch this in, it's like the friends and family discount. It's free. Okay, now we're talking. Let me try this. It's free. And so I went down to Arlington on the morning of this 5K, and I wasn't—I didn't know how to do structured training. I didn't know anything about it. I just would get off work and go for a run. And so I think I posted like a 22 something. 22:53, 22:40 something. Which, you know, at the time was a good time for me. I was happy with it. I ended up as the second overall male, and I won a $50 gift card to racetrack gas stations. So I actually made money off of this event. And so it was like, wow, like, these—doing an organized race is actually pretty cool. I really liked that. It was fun and been signing up for races ever since.

Carrie: Oh, I love it.

Vanessa: That's awesome.

Carrie: Well, mine was—I ran the Ute Days 5k.

Andrew: Oh, what a name.

Carrie: A Norwegian type event back in my little town of Dawson, Minnesota, and I was five years old. So I'm going way back.

Andrew: When you say Norwegian event, what does that mean?

Carrie: Well, so I grew up in this rural town in Minnesota, and the majority of the people out there are Scandinavian, and so they have a Norwegian event or festival that's called—it used to be called Ute Days, and now I think it's Riverfest days. So they've switched it because there's more people, it's more diverse and all that. So, yeah, so I did a 5k when I was 5 years old because I had two older sisters and my mom and dad. We were all running this, you know, little tiny town's 5K. And I didn't know how to run, and so I had followed my big sisters. They got out hard. So I got out so fast that I went in front of the cop car and I ran pretty hard for—so that was the pace car, right? For about a mile or so. And then we were way out in the country. We were going to go out, you know, a mile and a half and turn back and then loop around a little bit to make it 3.1. And by the time we turned around, the cop car needed to pick me up. Is that the swag wagon?

Andrew: I think we had—

Carrie: I think we had two cop cars in our town, and one was leading and one was the swag or the sag wagon. That's not the swag. The sag wagon. Sag wagon picked me up. Little did they know they were going to have a sign that said Olympian.

Vanessa: Carrie, tell us.

Carrie: And it's from here, like 25 years later.

Andrew: Yeah. Just took some time. Just took some time.

Carrie: Yeah. So, so fun. But we want to invite the audience to also answer this question, and you can do that by just letting us know on all of our social media accounts on RunDot what your first race was and what your first experience was. So please do that. We have fun with all of that.

Announcer: Let's go.

Main Set: 10 Big Tips

Carrie: All right, you guys ready for the main set?

Andrew: Ready.

Vanessa: Ready.

Carrie: I'm ready, too.

Tip #1: Know Your Training Phases

Carrie: Okay, big tip number one for getting the most out of your RunDot training is know your training phases. Let's hear about that.

Andrew: Yeah, so I'll take the lead on this one. Vanessa and I have some notes to make sure that we—we're podcast hosts, so we can talk too much if we don't give ourselves appropriate notes. So I'll take the lead here. Vanessa, please fill in any gaps. But the things Vanessa and I are going to share today are just kind of the aha moments we've had using the software, using the training over the last seven, eight years each. And so this first one is in RunDot. There's going to be two different phases that you'll bounce back and forth between, just depending on where you're at in your season. There's the development phase and there's the race prep phase. So the development phase is where you are most of your season, if there is not a race on the calendar where RunDot has to start building your stamina for a half marathon, a marathon, an ultra. You will be in the development phase, and in the development phase, RunDot's gonna focus on building your power, and it's gonna focus on raising your FTP, building your speed. Your workouts will be shorter, your weekly volume will be a little lower. There will be more intensity in a lot of the quality sessions, because your body can absorb that training stress. Because we're not having to build your stamina for any particular long race. We'll probably do a longer podcast episode about this. But in short, you cannot effectively build stamina and power at the same time. So if you have a marathon on the calendar and RunDot sees, okay, I need to start building this athlete's stamina for this marathon three months out from the marathon. Once you hit that three months out point, wherever your power is, whatever your 5K time is, whatever your speed is, that's like you're capped. You can't get faster in those last three months approaching the marathon, because in those last three months approaching the marathon, RunDot has to build out your stamina for that marathon. And that's what the race prep phase is. So all throughout your season, you'll be in the development phase, getting more powerful, getting stronger, crushing those zone five, zone six intervals. And then once you get closer to a race and RunDot sees, oh, that marathon's coming up. This athlete is going to take 4 hours and 56 minutes on course at this marathon. I need to start building out their stamina now. That's when you'll slip into the race prep phase, where RunDot is actually preparing you to have the stamina you need to stay on course for that. So that's where you'll start seeing your volume will go up week by week, with RunDot knowing how much time you need to be on course. So it's not preparing you to run 26.2 miles. It's not preparing you to run 13.1 miles or 50 miles. It's preparing you to be on course for five hours, six hours, four hours, three hours, whatever it's going to take for you to finish that race. In the race prep phase, it's where it is, where it's giving you sessions that get longer and longer for your body to be able to last on course when it comes to race day. So the beauty, the beautiful thing here is, like, this might sound complicated or this starts dipping into training theory. And these are the kind of things that coaches do for you throughout a season. The beautiful thing here is you don't have to know any of this. You can just fire up RunDot and whatever session is there, go out and do it. But it's nice to know why is RunDot giving me the session it's giving me? When you have a race coming up, you're in the race prep phase and you'll see it start to build your stamina for the race. When you don't have a race on the calendar or coming up, it's gonna have a lot more shorter and more powerful, you know, power driven workouts. And it's just kind of cool to know that. But the beauty is you just fire up your workout and you do it. RunDot's gonna take care of you. But that's our tip number one, because it does inform, you know, your microcycles, your mesocycles. You will, you know, if you pay attention to it, be able to see RunDot doing certain things with your weeks, with your months based on what races you have on the calendar.

Vanessa: Yeah, I am going to jump in here because I was one of those athletes that thought, hey, I'm three months out from a race, I should start training now. And I thought effectively that when I started training I would be getting faster because I knew nothing about like this power stamina paradox. And so it's fascinating to me that people do this in all sports. Like anytime that they have a major goal, they're like, okay, well I need to start training X number of months before based on, you know, the research that they've done. But the developmental phase is one super important because it's building that power for you and it's going to make you faster and stronger. But the second thing is it's really fun. It is so fun to be hitting those zone five, zone six, you know, zones that you have and to be putting out a lot of effort. I find it to be extremely fun. And the longer that you're in that developmental phase, the faster you're going to be in your race. And so if you have a race that's like three months out, then start training like six or seven or eight or even a year away from that race because that's when you're going to build up the capacity within your body systems to be able to get faster for the race. So that's why I like the dev phase. I call it the dev phase.

Carrie: The dev phase. I know I always think of getting fit to get fitter. You know, like those early months are just kind of, you know, it's sort of that fun mode where you can just go out there and build and build and build. But you're right, like three months in, maybe you're not going to hit your 5K PR. But some people surprise themselves with that amount of volume and they are out there and they do. They don't necessarily have the zip and the speed that they might be before they start their marathon training, but they do surprise themselves sometimes with just that strength building and how strong they've really become.

Tip #2: Pace Your Workout by the Correct Metric

Carrie: Okay, let's get to number two. Big tip number two for getting the most out of your RunDot training is pace your workout by the correct metric.

Vanessa: How the training works is that you're going to see obviously in the app you're going to see the workout name, you're going to see the type of session it is, and then you're going to also see the exact metric that you're trying to follow in that particular session to make sure that you're getting the most benefit out of your training. So those metrics might be heart rate is one and then pace is the other.

Now if you're using some additional technology like a stride pod or something like that, instead of using pace, you could use power to be your metric. So you're going to either have heart rate or pace/power. Those are the two types that you're going to be working off of. So one of the amazing things about RunDot is that each session is going to be designed to target one of the physiological systems that coincides with the different zones that we're going to be training in. So this is the beauty of the program. You get to train for fewer hours, but you're still going to get the maximum benefit because you're working the right system at the right time. So what you're going to do is for heart rate based runs, these ones are going to show up with a little heart icon in your app. So there's going to be a little heart and what that means is that you need to follow your heart rate zones, which are different than your pacing zones for some people. So when you see heart rate on your calendar, it's going to be an easy run. And then the other one, as I mentioned earlier, is like the pacing or the power. So these ones here are the ones where you're going to be putting out, you know, a greater effort. Your RPE is going to be higher. Your paces are going to be faster. And this is obviously the type of workout that's working on your fitness levels. Right. Like your cardiovascular system. And that is going to be the other type of run.

Andrew: Yeah. The only thing I'll add—I mean, Vanessa covered that really, really well. But it's so crucial when you go out the door for your run or go to the treadmill for your run or whatever to know which metric to follow. Because like Vanessa said, there's basically—am I judging this run off of heart rate or am I judging this run off of effort, which is pace or power? And huge shout out to our software development team. They just released the newest version of RunDot in the App Store, and it's so much clearer. They do such a good job of telling you right there in your workout on the phone screen. There are certain days where the point is to keep that heart rate in zone two. And that's what Vanessa's talking about. Sometimes you have to walk to do that. The point isn't to go run three miles. The point is to run 20 minutes at zone two. But there's other days where RunDot—the point of the workout is to run a certain pace or to hold a certain power for a certain amount of time. And so again, the new app does such a good job of telling you which one it is. But we wanted to make that a tip here, just to highlight it. Is today a heart rate day or is today a power/pace day? And if you know that going out the door, you're gonna get the workout right.

Tip #3: Keep the Easy Stuff Easy and the Hard Stuff Hard

Carrie: Big tip number three for getting the most out of your RunDot training is keep the easy stuff easy and the hard stuff hard.

Andrew: Yes.

Carrie: Andrew, you're taking this one?

Andrew: Yeah, I'm going to take this one because I'm so passionate about this. I was a hundred percent before I started training with TriDot and now RunDot, I had like, a loose concept that some days I should go do more miles than less, and some days I should do less miles, and they should be harder. And some runs should be, you know, I should pick up the pace and sometimes I should go slow. I just didn't know enough to know how to do that properly. And so what most runners end up doing is if they don't know what their zones are and they don't know what zone two feels like, zone four, zone five, zone six, what they should feel like—a lot of runners end up spending a lot of time in zone three. And zone three isn't easy enough to get the adaptations we're looking for in zone two. And it's not hard enough to build our power like we build our power in zone four, five or six. And it's kind of this dead zone that a lot of runners end up stuck in if they don't know any better. And that was me a hundred percent. Each of the zones brings about a different physiological change in our body. And you'll see in your RunDot training, there's a really cool chart, a really cool visualization of what your intervals look like in every single workout. And you can see, where is my zone two? Where are my little zone five, zone four, zone sixes? You will spend very little time in zone three until you're in the race prep phase, building out your stamina for race day. And so anyway, what I would say here is, and Vanessa said it a moment ago, let your easy stuff be easy so the hard stuff can be hard. When I first started training with TriDot, you know, you want those workouts on Strava to look good, right? And so I think all of us have a hard time backing off like we should on the easy days. And like my heart rate zone for zone two, I think the top of it is in the low 130s, right? So I shouldn't be trying to hit 134 on those days. I should be trying to keep it well under that because the point is for it to be easy. And when I finally started letting the easy stuff be easy and staying clearly in zone two, walking when I needed to walk, not trying to flirt with that upper line of zone two—oh my gosh. Like I found when zone four, five, six came around, my legs were there to really crush those intervals. There's a very specific workout in the RunDot catalog called intervals. And in your interval workout, you know, depending on who you are and what your fitness is, what your body can take, you will have zone five intervals. For me, when I get an interval workout, I have five zone five intervals of four minutes with one minute in between. That's what my usual interval day workout is. And I didn't read the full description in RunDot and so what I used to do—it literally was five minutes at zone five or four minutes in zone five and then one minute in zone one. And so I would like do the slowest jog possible in zone one because I felt like I needed to keep running. Cause this is a run workout. And by the end of the workout I was struggling to stay in zone five all the way through that last interval. I read the notes one time. I finally read the session notes and the session notes literally say for the zone one, take a full on walking rest. And when I went out and did that same workout and held zone 5 for 4 minutes and let myself walk for a minute instead of a slow, slow, slow, slow jog for a minute, oh my gosh, I could hold that zone 5 interval all the way to the end. It's amazing how it's crafted exactly for you to spend the right amount of time in each zone. And so anyway, the whole thing here is when RunDot gives you zone two and zone one, keep it easy in zone one and zone two. There's gonna be days where you're given a zone two run and you're out there and you feel good and you want to push the pace a little bit. You want to go 10 minutes longer than it tells you to—don't, because you might feel good today. But RunDot is keeping in mind what it's giving you tomorrow and the day after and the day after. And it's going to have your legs ready for all those intervals. Because when zone four, zone five, zone six comes around, we want you to be fresh enough to crush it. Last thing I'll say here and then we'll see if Vanessa has any thoughts. A lot of people are familiar with the training concept of the 80/20 principle. About 80% of your training should be easy and about 20% of your training should be hard. Loosely that's not incorrect. You'll see in your RunDot training, a majority of your time is easier and a fewer amount of your time is quality intervals. But if you're following 80/20, 80/20 might be the correct ratio for a certain type of athlete. Maybe somebody who's 60, has an injury history and specializes in 10Ks. But if you're a younger athlete, that ratio for you might be more like 70/30. Your body can handle more intensity and needs less zone 2. And so RunDot really just across the board gets it right and is giving you the right amount of easy stuff and the right amount of hard stuff. And so you just have to go out and execute it.

Carrie: Yeah.

Vanessa: You know, Andrew, I think this is so funny because Vanessa's program prior—it's hilarious.

Andrew: Yeah.

Vanessa: Vanessa's program was 100% intensity. There's no rest, there's no recovery. Every run is the hardest thing that you can do. And then you wonder why you get injured all the time.

Carrie: Right, right.

Vanessa: I had zero clue about training programs. And I would print them off the Internet and I would follow them, but I would follow them if I wanted. If it was like the hardest workout, then I would follow it. And if it was the easiest workout, I'd be like, no, I'm going to go hard anyways. And so this phrase itself, like, keep the easy stuff easy—I've learned the hard way a thousand times over that this is the most important thing that you can possibly do for your body and your sanity to make sure that you stay injury free. So, yeah, I agree.

Carrie: It's not keep the easy stuff hard and go hard. That's not the same. Keep the easy stuff easy and the hard stuff hard.

Tip #4: Make Investments in Ease of Training

Carrie: Okay. All right. Big tip number four for getting the most out of your RunDot training: make investments in ease of training. So let's talk a little bit about that.

Vanessa: Okay, I'm gonna take this one first. And when you talk about investments, it's not like making the biggest, most expensive upgrades that you can that you think is going to make you a faster runner. I'm talking about making the training environment convenient because the easier it is to start a session and the more access you have to the things that you need, that's going to allow you to be more consistent. And as we all know, consistency is like the most important thing if you want to make any kind of fitness gain or any kind of progress in the sport that you've chosen to do. So sometimes, you know, setting up your space is really going to be helpful. And that might mean, you know, getting yourself a yoga mat or some gym flooring. We know that strength training is super, super important for runners, and it's often the thing that runners tend to push to the side and not do. But if you make it easy and you make it a part of the place where you are, or if you get a gym membership that's really close to your house, you're more likely to go and execute that session. And it's going to positively impact the gains that you're going to make across the board. I actually take, like, this package of recovery tools with me to my daughter's soccer practices, and I'll put them in my bag. They go with me everywhere. I have, like, a stretch cord. I have loops. I have all the kinds of balls, the neuro balls, the peanut balls. I take my foam roller, and I just sit in the corner and I do my recovery while I'm watching her soccer practice. And it's really, really important. Your body is going to thank you. You'll be able to hit those zones, you know, in your other workouts, because you're taking care of yourself a little bit more. So these tiny little investments that you can make so that it fits into your lifestyle is going to allow you to be more consistent. So if you can make these little changes to make things exciting and fun—I've put up Christmas lights in what I call my Gains Cave. And so I have these lights, and if I'm training at, like, five in the morning, I turn these lights on, and they just instantly make me happy. So these things are little investments that you can make that are going to really help you get after it. I love that phrase, by the way, Carrie. It's one of my favorites.

Carrie: I have a playlist now.

Vanessa: Get after it.

Carrie: Oh, well, you can't say it and not want to. But I totally agree. It doesn't have to be something like, you know, this big ordeal. It just can be something small that is like, oh, yes, I'm gonna get to foam roll for five minutes today. Or, you know, I get to just go and meditate or visualize after my workout and think about all the awesomeness that I just did. Like, all those things on a yoga mat you can do. But I agree. I mean, also, getting a nice new treadmill is fun, but it is—it's an investment.

Vanessa: That is. I haven't made. I have, like, a donated treadmill that's probably about 25 years old, but it's okay. It works. It was free. I'm cool with that.

Carrie: I love that. I love free. I definitely do. I love free. All right, Andrew, we move it on to five.

Andrew: Yeah. The only thing I'll add here, just very simply, like, what this looks like for me is I've learned when my stuff is ready, I'm much more likely to stop what I'm doing in my day and go get my training session in. So, like, my running shoes are sitting in the same spot in my room. There's a pair of running socks in them. There's a pair of running shorts laid on them. The tank top is already there. If all that is laid out the night before, I will do the session the next day. If all of that is in separate places in different drawers, it just ups the percentage that I'm just not going to get to that session because I'm just not going to stop and get my stuff ready. A game changer for me on actually, like stretching and foam rolling and like doing that kind of stability, mobility work we should all be doing was taking it from upstairs in a bin in my pain cave and bringing it downstairs in a bin in the corner of my bedroom. Because right before bed, if it's downstairs, right here at the ready, I will stop and take 10 minutes and foam roll and stretch a little bit. If I had to go upstairs, if I had to climb the stairs to grab my foam roller and foam roll at 9 o'clock at night, which is the time that works for me to do that, I'm not gonna go up there and do it. And so that's what Vanessa's getting at here—what are the little things you can do to make it that much more accessible to stop and do your workout?

Carrie: Yep, I agree. I sleep in my running clothes a lot of the time. People think I'm crazy, but I'm telling you it works.

Tip #5: Be Smart with Your Schedule

Carrie: Okay, let's move on. Big tip number five for getting the most out of your RunDot training: be smart with your schedule.

Andrew: Yep. So when you sign on to RunDot and you onboard and your training populates, the way the settings are, the default settings are statistically the most optimal setting that an athlete could have. And so if it works for you, if you see where on what days the training sessions are, what times the training sessions are, if that works for you, roll with it because it is the 100% most optimized pattern you could possibly follow. But that's no good if it doesn't fit your life. If you can't get the sessions in because of where they are placed. And so you can go into your training preferences on RunDot and tell RunDot how much volume you want between low, standard and high. You can tell it what days off you want to have. If you want to take a couple days off or one day off during the week on training, you can tell it what day you want to do your long run. Like, hey, okay, you might have put my long run on Saturday, but Saturday is no good for me because of X, Y and Z. Let's do my long run on Wednesday. And so whatever you put into your training preferences, RunDot will see that and it will optimize your schedule based on that. Now, it's not going to wreck it. Every change you make in your settings does take statistically how optimal your setting can be by a smidge, right? By a fraction of a percentage. You're making some concessions for it to fit your life. That's fine. We want it to fit your life. So don't freak out about that. Just know, change as little as possible, but change what you need to change to actually get the schedule—to get the training done. And then from there, you know, once you've put in your preferences, what's going to work for you, it's very easy to drag and move workouts as things come up. Because things come up right. All three of us on this call have kids, we have work obligations, we have family, we have spouses. We put a lot of that first in front of our training. So we have to move training. It's very easy to—oh man, according to RunDot, I'm supposed to do a 45 minute run today with some intervals. I was going to do it at 7am. I've got to do X, Y and Z. I need to push that to tomorrow morning instead. Okay, do that, that's fine. But what I want people to know is move things as little as possible, but move them when you need to move them. And then when you move something, don't stack them. So if you're stacking training sessions to where you have five training sessions on the weekend because you couldn't get to them all during the week, your body can't handle all that training stress in two days if it was meant to have it over the course of five days. So my general rule of thumb for myself is if I can push a workout a day or two and get all my workouts for the week done, I'll do that. But if I'm moving a workout more than two days, okay, just don't do that workout. It's okay. Like no data is still data. RunDot will see. Okay, they didn't do that session. And it's going to know that when it's creating your future sessions or adjusting your future sessions. Consistency over time is what we're looking for, not perfection of schedule. And so don't feel like you have to make up every single missed session. Get the sessions in that you can get in. And importantly, if you do—if you're looking at your week and you just need to cut a session or two, the most important sessions are your sessions that have quality work. So your sessions that have zone four, zone five, zone six, we call those quality sessions. So make sure as you're moving your sessions that you're getting the quality work in first and cut the zone two stuff. The all zone two sessions if you need to cut something. But have fun with it. Don't stress too much about it, but do know that there is some optimizing of your schedule that you can do to have a good training week.

Carrie: Well, and it's nice that, you know, people understand we're human and even the app has to understand we're human too. However those crazy AI things work.

Tip #6: Be Smart with Where and When You Do Your Session

Carrie: All right, let's go to big tip number six. Okay, so big tip number six for getting the most out of your RunDot training is to be smart with where and when you do your session. Vanessa.

Vanessa: Yeah, so some workouts can be done perfectly fine anywhere. And that's something that is, you know, we can take your workout with you. You can go and execute it, and it's fine. And what I mean anywhere is like on a trail, on a pathway, on a treadmill. Zone 2 runs, for example. Those are really good things where they can be done anywhere. And if you wanted to go and hit the trail with a friend, you might even go into the mountains. You can moderate your heart rate. You know, you can make sure that you're staying in your heart rate zones. So some of the workouts can be done anywhere. But that also means that there are some places where workouts are better suited to specific types of terrains. So if we're focusing on a workout that's got faster intervals, like we're talking about zone five, zone six intervals—that might be best done on a track. And I'm sure, Carrie, that's like your happy place. Right? You probably love getting to the track.

Carrie: Used to be.

Vanessa: Yeah, used to be. And getting those interval sessions done. And Andrew had mentioned that interval session earlier, and it's a doozy of a workout. And it's really making sure that the system is understanding where you're at in terms of your pacing that's going to be coming up for you in the future. And it usually shows up on the calendar prior to like a 5K time trial. And so that's a really good indication. One, you can do it on a track and then two, you can measure your progress from one interval session to another because you might even notice, hey, the last time I did this interval session and I used time on the track instead of the actual distance. And now I'm recognizing that I can actually go further in distance than I did the last time in the same amount of time. So that's kind of a really cool way to measure progress. And another thing that you might want to do in terms of your faster runs like the threshold repeats or the 5k time trial—those are ones where you want to make sure that you have some kind of really smooth terrain. Like for my five kilometer time trials, I do the same path every single time. And I look at the wind direction and I'm like which way am I going to be running into the wind and which way is it going to be at the back? Because I want to make sure that I'm—

Carrie: Running on the second half, right?

Vanessa: Exactly, exactly. And sometimes that comes with a slight incline, but I'm like that's better than having wind in your face. So you might just want to have a look at where you're going to be running to kind of suit the workout that you're going to be doing. For mav shuttles—I love doing mav shuttles on the treadmill actually because I feel like it's a really easy place to execute those high intensity sprints in a safe place. I do them outside in the summer as well, but in the wintertime for sure I will be doing those on the treadmill. And then yeah, like I said earlier, zone two might be the time where you explore a new trail or you go somewhere else in your city to see another part that has a lot to look at or you know, it might be great to try something new. So I think that's important to, you know, look at the session you have and then plan accordingly so that you can execute that session to the best of your ability. And then your TrainX score will be great. You'll see improvements in your training and your progress will be spot on. And then you'll just be full of happiness when you see that.

Tip #7: Get the Environment Correct

Carrie: All right, you guys, six down, we have four to go. So big tip number seven, Andrew, for getting the most out of RunDot training is to get the environment correct. So tell us what you know about environment.

Andrew: One of, in my opinion, the coolest features of RunDot—and there is no other training platform in the world that I know of in existence in all of humankind that does this other than RunDot and TriDot—it accounts for your environment. So if it's giving you a session for 5pm on Wednesday, because that's when you've told it you want to do training on Wednesday, it's going to look at what elevation are you at, what is the weather, what is the humidity, what's the environment you're training in? And it's going to adjust your paces for you for your zones. And so if it's a pace based workout like Vanessa was talking about earlier, or if it's a heart rate based workout, it's going to change what pace it wants you running at based on that weather. So for me, I live in Dallas, Texas. So where this is usually is it being really freaking hot outside and it's saying, hey, your zone four might normally be six minute miles, but today because it's this degrees and this humidity, your zone 4 target pace needs to be 7:15, right? And that's a pretty dramatic slowdown. It's just an anecdotal example. But the beauty is this is not something you need to do anything about. RunDot makes these adjustments for you. But what's important is telling RunDot when and where you are when you do a workout. And so if you are working out at the time you normally are in the location you normally are, you probably don't need to do much. But just check it. Just check and see—is RunDot's weather—is it referencing outdoor weather? Does it think you're going to be indoors? For indoors, if it thinks you're going to be on a treadmill, there's actually a button you can check to let it know, hey, I'm indoors today and it's going to default to a 70 degree, just kind of generic, this is what the temperature probably is inside type of weather condition. So just let it know if you're gonna be indoors on a treadmill versus outdoors. If you are going outdoors, just update the time. If it thinks you're gonna train at 8am and you gotta kick that session to later in the day for reason X, Y and Z. Just—if you go out for that session, you push the workout to your watch, you go outside, you fire up the workout, it's not going to have adjusted unless you've told RunDot, hey, I'm doing this at a different time than you were expecting. And so just make that adjustment. And the other adjustment you can make here is when you're traveling, if you're not at home, it knows where you live. And so it knows I do my training in Dallas, Fort Worth. If I am on vacation up in the Rocky Mountains with the family in Denver, Colorado for a week and I go do a RunDot run, if I don't tell it that I'm somewhere else, it's going to default to Dallas weather and Dallas elevation, which is very different from Denver weather and Denver elevation. And so when you're traveling, let it know. It'll sense via GPS—you tell it where you are and it will pull in the correct weather, it'll pull in the correct elevation and it will adjust your training zones for that. So it's just one more way to make sure you're doing your training sessions right. And it's just letting RunDot know so it can account for the weather correctly and get your training zones right for that session.

Carrie: Well, that's smart. Yeah, just—I think the key takeaway I really like just by listening to you is just take that extra step and tell them if you're inside or outside. And also, I think the time. I didn't realize that would make that big of a difference. So if you push it a few hours or do an evening run rather than a morning run, make sure you let it know that.

Tip #8: Do What You Can Do to Stay Healthy

Carrie: Okay, big tip number eight for getting the most out of your RunDot training is do what you can do to stay healthy.

Andrew: Yeah.

Vanessa: This is so, so, so important and—

Andrew: I'm sure—so good at this. Vanessa's so good at this.

Vanessa: Well, I have to be because I'm a highly injured athlete. I've never uploaded my genomics to the platform, but I do know that it would show that every single gene that is, you know, propensity for injury, I have it. I know I do. So the best program in the world is not going to do you any good if you can't stay healthy enough to be consistent. And we all know that consistency is the most important thing. And in terms of healthy, what I'm actually referring to is not just your physical body, like your tissues and your ligaments and tendons and muscles, it also is your immune system. So it's both of those things. And how do we make sure that we stay healthy? So number one thing that I think is most valuable is prioritizing sleep because this is going to impact our immune system and it's also going to allow us to recover from our training sessions. And guess what? Sleep is free. You don't have to pay for it.

Carrie: That's my favorite word, right?

Vanessa: It's free. So if you're making sleep a priority, having a consistent bedtime, making sure that screens are turned off, you know, in an appropriate amount of time before you go to bed, and then getting enough hours—that's going to have a major impact not only in your training in life, but also the rest of your life, your work life, your family life, because your productivity is going to go up and you're just going to be a full on rock star. So sleep, that's the number one thing. And then the second thing I think that keeps us healthy is nutrition. It's a really big one. And it's something that I really love learning about and talking about as well. So when our training hours are getting up there and even if the intensity is increasing, we need to make sure that we're getting sufficient protein and carbs. A lot of time people are like, it's protein, it's protein. But the carbs are just so important. And if you're having a session over an hour, fueling those sessions with carbohydrates is totally amazing. And it will allow you to execute the training that's prescribed for you and it's also going to allow you to start your recovery process a little bit sooner. And we all know that the bread and butter is the recovery so we need to get on it as soon as we can. So the other thing that I think is really, really important and this is the one that I have the most experience with is injury, of course. And there's one of our favorite TriDot and RunDot coaches, Matt Sumner. He's a multi time Boston qualifier and finisher. He says this quote all the time and I feel like I need his voice on repeat almost every single day. And it says: "Listen to the body when it whispers so it doesn't have to yell." And what this means is like if you're feeling the slightest bit of something, a tight muscle, an ache, a pain, I'm taking your words Carrie and I'm saying get after it. You need to hop on that roller, get your massage balls out, use the massage gun, get a massage, do mobility, everything that you can do to make that little tiny thing that doesn't feel quite normal—if you can get through that then you're going to be putting yourself in a good position to enhance your recovery. But if you ignore it, which I've done way too many times more than I can count on two hands, you're going to develop a niggle. And then we all know that a niggle can easily turn into a full blown injury and that's when we're sidelined from our training and that's when for me especially my mental health has a serious decline when I can't do the things that I need to do to make myself feel good. So it's just super important to make sure that we're taking care of the little messages that our body is giving us to make sure that we're going to be able to keep training and doing the things that we love. So stay healthy, get your strength training in, do all the things.

Carrie: Do all the things. But like you said, sleep. I think so many people just forget how much we need to sleep and it doesn't necessarily have to mean like you're sleeping from 10pm to 10am but it's just consistent. You know I try to get at least six if not seven hours and I know some people are like how do you even get that much? But I turn stuff off, I'm like I can't. If I have a 5:30am workout I have to be in bed by 9:30 or 10 at the latest and I just kind of shut it down and my husband's like well I haven't talked to you all day. I'm like I know because I gotta run tomorrow so see you tomorrow. See you tomorrow on the flip side.

Andrew: Bye.

Vanessa: Yeah.

Carrie: Yep. So that's true. Andrew, do you have anything else that you want to add to that?

Andrew: Yeah, the only thing I'll add, you know Vanessa was joking about her physiogenomics. Another thing that can impact your training is if you upload a genome file—so your actual DNA—if you upload that file to RunDot it can account for that in your training prescription. I did that a number of years ago and it confirmed I do have all the DNA SNPs that show a highly injured athlete. My injury predisposition is high, according to RunDot. Thank you, RunDot. But how this comes into practice for me is—if you opted out of every single run where you felt something, you would never go for a run. Right? We're all getting older. We all like to move our bodies and things hurt sometimes. And so for me, I try to pay attention to—speak for myself—am I feeling the same thing for a few days? Like, if I feel something in a run, oh, my ankle feels a little funny today, it could just be a fluky day and I might not feel it again for months or I might feel that again tomorrow, or I might feel that again the day after that. And if I start to notice the same niggle multiple days in a training week, that's telling me, okay, I need to back off for a day or two, skip a session for a day or two. Not move it down the road, skip it entirely for a day or two, come back to the training, see if it's gone away. And then if that problem stays in my running experience for multiple weeks at a time, okay, now we're going to talk to somebody. We're going to talk to the PT, we're going to talk to the orthopedic specialist. We're lucky we work for the company. We got a guy on team who's a physical therapist. So we all just call BJ and say, BJ, let me tell you about what's hurting right now. But anyway, because Vanessa's absolutely right—you can have the best training in the world, but if you can't stay healthy enough to show up consistently, you're not going to see the fitness benefits. And if you don't know when to back off for a day here and a day there, or when to consult the PT for a day, you know, here and there throughout your season, you could find yourself not training more often than you like.

Carrie: I love that. I think it's really nice that you guys have someone in your back pocket, but I feel like all of us have someone that we know or we can talk to our training partners about who they go and see.

Andrew: Yeah.

Carrie: Whether it's a chiropractor, physical therapist, massage therapist, use that community that we have here in RunDot and also just in the run community.

Tip #9: Create Space for Fun

Carrie: Okay, big tip number nine for getting the most out of the RunDot training: create space for fun. This one might be my fave.

Andrew: Absolutely. And it's such a crucial one. Honestly to take a step back—when I started training for triathlon with TriDot, I thought I wasn't gonna like it. I thought I was very used to just, I would get off work—you know, my wife and I at the time, we didn't have kids—and so I would get off work and just okay, what do I feel like doing today? Do I want to go for a run? Do I want to go for a swim? Do I want to hop on the bike in the pain cave? And I could just kind of do what I wanted. I didn't think I was going to like being told what to do every day. I thought I was going to lose the flexibility that I enjoyed about being a multi sport athlete. And that could not have been farther from the truth. I very quickly embraced like oh my gosh, this is wonderful not having to figure out what I'm going to do. I'm being told what to do. It's like, I think we all joke about like meal planning. Like how much does it suck as an adult having to figure out what you're going to eat three meals a day every single day? It's the worst. Can someone just plan that for me?

Vanessa: You have kids?

Andrew: Yeah. Then you got kids and you gotta figure out what the kids are gonna eat every day. I think it's like that. I very quickly was like, oh, I actually really enjoy not having to think about it and just I fire up the app, I go do whatever training session it tells me to do. But within that, when you start doing that month after month, week after week, year after year, season after season, because you're chasing a goal or you're just—a lot of us are type A, we want to check every box that RunDot tells us to check off—it can begin to get redundant. You've got to create space in this for fun. And I will say like for me, if I have an A race on the calendar, if I have an Ironman coming up or 70.3 or a half marathon, if there's something on the calendar where I want to do really well, you know, the four or five, six, seven months before that I'm going to really buckle down and do every training session to the T as much as I can because I want to perform in that one thing. But if there's not a serious A race or serious goal in front of me, I will throw a workout for funsies in there or I'll blow off a session that would probably be done best on the track. You know, I'll go to the mountain bike trails nearby and go do a trail run out in the sunshine instead. And so it's just, you know, you gotta create space for fun and recognize when to do that. And in your season there's going to be times where it's best to buckle down and in your season there's going to be times where, hey, like, you know, remind yourself that this is a fun thing. And some ways to do that: you can jump into some group runs wherever you live. There's probably some good running clubs or running groups or running stores that offer group runs. Go run some trails. Go try a new path. Go try running at a new park, a new location, a new city. Get to know other RunDotters. Right? We've got the RunDot community hub. We've got the RunDot Facebook groups. Find some folks in your area that you can run with and really just find the right times in your cadence, whether it's weekly or once a month or at certain parts in the season to make sure that you're having fun with this. Add some races to the calendar that you're not as serious about that are just kind of there for fun. But don't—I've seen, I've worked for the company now for seven years. I've been a triathlete now for 11. And I have friends who, man, they obsessed over every single detail on every single workout and tried to be perfect all the time and just got burnt out. And I've seen people that really have a healthy ebb and flow with that. And I feel like those folks stay in the sport longer, they compete a little longer, they tend to be a little healthier. So we are all for the structured training. It's going to get you healthier, it's going to get you fitter. It's going to keep you healthier, but you gotta have fun along the way.

Carrie: Yeah, I was thinking about this when you guys were talking about meal planning and stuff. Maybe we need—we have TriDot, RunDot—maybe we need FuelDot or SnackDot or something like that. So just keep telling me how to live, breathe.

Andrew: Yeah, move. All of it.

Vanessa: Agreed. Agreed. I have one more thing to throw in there to make training a little bit more fun. We have come up with some pretty cool ideas on the TriDot staff of coaches in run sessions in particular, because this is something that you can do really quite socially and you can integrate some fun into your training sessions. So an example of one of the runs that I really like to do is when fartlek shows up on the calendar. Grab some of your faster running buddies and play catch me if you can. And that's when you just say, hey, go until we reach this destination. And I'm going to try and catch you. You get a head start. I have to catch up to you. And it's just a super fun way to include other friends into your training or maybe a partner, a spouse. Then they feel important that they're, you know, helping you to achieve some kind of a goal. And it's a fun way to kind of, you know, lighten up the mood a bit with your training sessions. So I like doing that for fartleks in particular.

Andrew: And Vanessa, you do something like that and, you know, so your TrainX score that day might not be a 100. Right. You might score 71 or a 78 or a 62. But, you know, okay, so you didn't do the workout to perfection, but you still did the workout pretty well. And even on top of that, you had fun doing it and that's fine.

Carrie: I always say too, you know, a lot of people forget that when you go on a treadmill or on a bike or whatever that is stationary, you know, you can work out with other athletes that maybe aren't the same pace. And I always like, you know, track.

Andrew: Same thing at the track.

Carrie: Yeah, yeah, at the track. Or like Christmas break, it's always fun to get the family to go to the gym together. The gym is open and, you know, my mom does not want to try to run my pace, but she'll do her own run/walk workout and we're right there next to each other and we can say go at the same time and we do the two minute interval or whatever. So yeah, that is fun. I love that.

Tip #10: Keep Your Race Schedule Up to Date

Carrie: Okay, you ready for the last one?

Andrew: We're there.

Vanessa: Okay.

Carrie: Big, big tip number 10 for getting the most out of your RunDot training is keep your race schedule up to date.

Vanessa: Yes. This is a really, really important thing that's going to impact your training and how your entire program is going to be laid out for you. So first off, want to say that it is totally okay to use our RunDot app without having a race on your schedule. There's a lot of people out there who, like Andrew earlier on in his running days, didn't want to do any races, and that's totally fine. And what's going to happen in training is that you'll just stay in developmental phase and you're going to see a massive increase in your strength and then you're going to be getting faster.

Andrew: At the same time, your 5k will get real dope. Your 5k time will get real, real, real good.

Carrie: Okay.

Vanessa: Exactly. All right, so you're just challenged to break 18 minutes again. So I'm like, well, she wants to break 18. I'm like, maybe I need to dust it up.

Andrew: Let's talk about it, Carrie. Let's talk about it. Now.

Vanessa: On the other side of that, when you do have a race, what it's going to do when you put it into the app, RunDot's going to actually build microcycles and mesocycles right into your plan and that's going to get you the most prepared for that race. So RunDot is actually going to take the course, the weather, the temperature, the elevation of that race and it's going to create a training plan for you—training program that is dynamic, that will change over time as you become more fit and as your physiology changes along with the training that you're doing. But the initial program that it's going to spit out is going to be catered to getting you to run that specific course as fast as possible in the least amount of time. So this is really, really important. So you can actually add a race as an A race, a B race, or a C race. And what those different levels do is they alter your build, they alter your taper week, and then they alter your recovery week from that race as well. So if it's an A race, you're going to get a full build, you're going to get a full race week taper—sometimes it's two weeks, you know, depending on what the length of the race is. And then you'll also get a full recovery. And then, you know, a B race is in the middle obviously. And then a C race is where you don't really want the race to impact your training in any way. So maybe you have a local 5K that you want to do and you're just going to use it as a regular training day. Well, just slap it in as a C race then RunDot knows that you're going to be doing this race and it's not going to affect your training anyway. So it's important for the system to know what you're training for so that it can cater and fine tune your training to that specific course and elevation. And I can tell you it seems crazy that your training program will adhere to things that might show up in the course like elevation, lots of hills. Your training is going to be altered as a result of the things that you're going to have to do in those races. So it's really cool that it can be so fine tuned and specific to allow your training to change as a result of what you're going to expect of yourself on that specific race day. So we call this RaceX. RaceX is the feature in RunDot that's going to track the race schedule and your predicted splits and pacing plans. So if you have put your races in then you'll be able to go into RaceX closer to race day and based on the temperature of that specific day and the start time of your race, the race pacing plans are going to be specific to your race and to you on the day that you're preparing for that race. So it's just a super cool, very, very cool feature that is going to take you again to the next level of your training.

Carrie: That does sound cool. Andrew, do you have any more to add to that?

Andrew: Yeah, just one cool thing to note when you're adding a race into RaceX. A lot of the popular races—the big races that are put out by the big race producers, you know something like a Rock and Roll marathon—they're already pre-programmed. The course is already in. The correct dates are already in. Our team stays on top of that. If you have a local 5k that's just down the road that is not in RaceX's system, you can add it manually and then you can upload a GPX file and boom, right there. RaceX then knows the course, it sees the elevation chart, it can pull the weather on that day in that location and it can give you a custom pacing plan for your race for that local 5k, 10k, half marathon, marathon down the road that might not be a big name race that's already in the system. So just know that not only can you add ones that you see there, but you can also add custom ones and upload that GPX file. But yeah, RaceX is a really cool tool. Go in, definitely poke around and see more of what it can do and keep your race schedule up to date.

Cooldown Question

Carrie: Now we need to go to the cooldown and I love this cooldown question. I think it's straightforward. I think it's great. Michelle put it out there and I want to hear your answers and I'd also like to tell everyone mine.

So Michelle asks: Why is RunDot giving me 20 minute easy runs? I am a high volume and have been running around 30 to 35 miles per week. With the plan it's creating for me, it doesn't seem like enough. Does anyone actually go out for 20 minute runs?

Andrew: I do. I do. And they're fantastic.

Carrie: I love it. I love that you're asking this, but yes. Andrew, tell me all about your 20 minute runs.

Andrew: Yeah. So in short, it's funny. When I joined TriDot, I joined TriDot at the same time as three training buddies of mine. So there's four of us that kind of rode together and ran together a lot that were, hey, you saw an ad for this. I saw—let's try it and see what we think. And three of the four of us loved it, stayed on it, kept improving, kept getting faster, kept getting stronger. The fourth buddy, his hang up was just—I just don't feel like I'm training enough. I'm used to training more. I'm used to training more. And so he dropped off, kept doing his own thing and then he kept wondering why he kept getting injured and couldn't stay healthy and wasn't improving like the rest of us were. And it was like, man, there's reasons. But anyway, the 20 minute run—specifically what you have to remember in the grand scheme of things is the weekly volume and the monthly volume, the micro cycle and the mesocycle. Every single workout is working together. Every single workout is a different instrument in the chorus that is getting you ready for your race distance and for your time. And so the—all of your runs adding up over the course of a week are doing way more for your stamina than you think they are. And so that 20 minute run might feel like a drop in the bucket. It might feel like why am I even lacing up and going out the door? It's only 20 minutes. But RunDot is putting that there in combination with longer runs throughout your week to add to your weekly time on feet, your weekly miles, the amount of time you're in zone two, you know, getting those adaptations we want from zone two. And it's doing it in a way that isn't adding a lot of stress. If those same 20 minutes were put in the middle, the front or the back of a longer run to make you feel like you're doing longer runs, those 20 minutes would carry a lot higher of a training stress tax than they do being parsed out on their own, if that makes sense. And so it's just a day where largely it's a recovery day, but it's an active recovery day because you are still moving, you are still on your feet, you are still booting up your system and going for a run and coming home. But we're not adding a lot of training stress to your week onto your body. We're not increasing the chance for injury. I love these runs. I find them super relaxing personally. Like all of the runs that have quality in them, that have intervals where you're gonna fire up in the zone four, zone five, zone six—I almost have to go into combat mode, like, okay, let's go attack this workout and get it done. And there's like pressure to do the workout well when I know I'm going out the door for one of my zone two 20 minute runs. It's just so relaxing. I don't throw on pump up music. I throw on chill relaxing, you know, bluegrass music or something. And I just—I observe the neighborhood and look at the Christmas lights and whatever. And actually, you know, she references her volume. Athletes can choose to be low volume, standard volume, or high volume. There was a period where between my coach and I on TriDot, we dabbled with me doing high volume in the run because I am a good runner, just to see what that would do for me. And I didn't like it because that 20 minute run, which for me was on Tuesdays, became 40 minutes and I was—it was kind of a big run. Yeah, I was so used to the 20 minute run. By the time I'm at minute 32, 35, like, I feel way more fatigued from that even just in zone two than if it's just 20 minutes. And that isn't the point of that run for an average athlete like myself. So anyway, I went back to just having it be 20. So when you see that run. Yes, go do that run. Let it be relaxing. It's a great day to—if you're going to get out and mow the lawn or you're going to go to a yoga class or you're going to do some strength, you know, do some extra strength that day if you just feel like itching to do more, do some more. Run drills that day if you're itching to do more. But RunDot is giving you all the miles and all the time on feet that you need. And that 20 minutes is a big part of that. It's just a part that's separated out to kind of not add to the training stress of a different day, but still keep your system firing through more often throughout the week. Uh, Vanessa, any other insights from you on that?

Vanessa: Yeah, I love running for 20 minutes. It's like quick and dirty.

Carrie: It's just great.

Vanessa: Yeah, you're done so quickly and it's just something that gets you out the door, as you said. And it also provides you with that opportunity, like you said, Andrew, to get in some extra mobility, to get in the strength work, to pay attention to the things that you need to pay attention to. And sometimes I know, Michelle, that this is so hard, but sometimes when you do less, you gain more. So sometimes when we do less volume and the volume that we're doing is more targeted to increasing all of the things that need to increase within our cardiovascular systems and our physical systems—sometimes doing less is going to allow you to see improvement faster and you're going to be just amazed at all of the changes that are going to happen. So just trust the process. I just encourage you and implore you to trust the process.

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