The Energy-Score Training Rule

This is a short placeholder story generated for the design demo. Replace it with a real interview.

Use it when

You're returning to exercise after a serious illness or treatment and your energy is unpredictable. A fixed plan fails because some days you can't do it. You skip, feel behind, then overdo it on a good day. The fix is a plan that adjusts to the day.

Step 1: Clear it with your medical team

Grace finished chemotherapy in March. Before her first session she asked her oncology nurse three questions: is running safe, what are my limits, and what symptoms mean stop. Her answers were yes, avoid crowded races until her blood counts recovered, and stop for chest pain, dizziness or unusual breathlessness.

Step 2: Score your energy every morning

Each morning she wrote a number from 1 to 10 on the kitchen calendar. The number picked the session. Seven or above meant the planned run. Four to six meant a 20-minute walk. Below four meant rest. In April most days were fives. By July most were sevens.

Step 3: Train in minutes

Distance made bad days feel like failures, so she planned by time. Week 1 was 20 minutes: walk 4, jog 1, repeated. She kept the jogs at a pace where she could still say a full sentence. When a session felt easy twice in a row, she swapped one walk minute for a jog minute.

Step 4: Build slowly toward the race

She added 5 minutes of total time every 2 weeks. She picked a 10K in October with a 90-minute cutoff, so walking was allowed. Her longest session before the race was 75 minutes, mostly jogging. She finished in 82 minutes, with walk breaks at every water station.

Try it this week

Ask your care team the three questions. Then do three 20-minute sessions of walk 4, jog 1. Score your energy each morning and let it choose the day. Keep the scores. They show your progress better than pace does.