Sep 18, 2026 · 34 min · 12 segments
This episode continues **The 5 Pillars of Better Running** with pillar three: HARD TRAINING. We look at VO₂max, threshold, running economy, interval structure, recovery and load management, and why…
Bjørn-Ivar SigbjørnsenHostThey can push oxygen uptake high, improve our ability to sustain a large fraction of our aerobic capacity, improve running economy, and expose the body to speeds and forces that easy running never reaches.
And as we get older, some of the qualities heart training challenges are also among the qualities we most want to keep.
And that is why hard training needs a little more thought than simply asking whether we can survive it.
Most runners have had sessions where the first few repetitions felt controlled, the middle was hard but still good, and then something changed.
The paste started slipping, the breathing became ragged, the form became less clean, and I finished the last repetition anyway because it was written in the plan.
Afterwards, there can be a certain satisfaction in having completed it.
But I have become more interested in the quality of what happened before the box was ticked.
If the final repetition is much slower than the others, if the mechanics are beginning to fall apart, and if the whole thing has changed from training into survival, that final repetition is not always the most valuable one.
Sometimes it is, and sometimes the purpose is to learn to work under fatigue.
But often the purpose was simply to accumulate quality work at a particular intensity.
Once the quality has gone, the session may have changed jobs without us really deciding that it should.
And that distinction matters, because a hard session should have a reason.
So the better question is not simply how hard the session should be, but what we're actually trying to improve.
A short hill session asks something different from threshold intervals.
Five-minute repetitions around VO2 max create a different kind of stress from a progression run.
And fast repetitions with a long recovery serve a different purpose again.
If we only judge a hard session by how tired we are at the end, we are judging the wrong thing.
The body does not really care whether we call something a hard workout.
It responds to the specific stress we give it, and different hard sessions stress the system in different ways.
They can push oxygen uptake high, improve our ability to sustain a large fraction of our aerobic capacity, improve running economy, and expose the body to speeds and forces that easy running never reaches.
And as we get older, some of the qualities heart training challenges are also among the qualities we most want to keep.
And that is why hard training needs a little more thought than simply asking whether we can survive it.
Most runners have had sessions where the first few repetitions felt controlled, the middle was hard but still good, and then something changed.
The paste started slipping, the breathing became ragged, the form became less clean, and I finished the last repetition anyway because it was written in the plan.
Afterwards, there can be a certain satisfaction in having completed it.
But I have become more interested in the quality of what happened before the box was ticked.
If the final repetition is much slower than the others, if the mechanics are beginning to fall apart, and if the whole thing has changed from training into survival, that final repetition is not always the most valuable one.
Sometimes it is, and sometimes the purpose is to learn to work under fatigue.
But often the purpose was simply to accumulate quality work at a particular intensity.
Once the quality has gone, the session may have changed jobs without us really deciding that it should.
And that distinction matters, because a hard session should have a reason.
So the better question is not simply how hard the session should be, but what we're actually trying to improve.
A short hill session asks something different from threshold intervals.
Five-minute repetitions around VO2 max create a different kind of stress from a progression run.
And fast repetitions with a long recovery serve a different purpose again.
If we only judge a hard session by how tired we are at the end, we are judging the wrong thing.
The body does not really care whether we call something a hard workout.
It responds to the specific stress we give it, and different hard sessions stress the system in different ways.
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