The Talk-Test Training Week

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

Use it when

Your watch decides whether a run was good. You chase pace on easy days, so you never recover, and your race times stall. For some runners the numbers also feed food or body worries. Effort-based training removes the numbers and keeps the structure.

Step 1: Learn the talk test

Chloe was in eating disorder recovery, working with a therapist and a dietitian. Her watch tracked pace, distance and calories, and she checked it every few seconds. Her treatment team suggested she leave it at home. Her coach gave her the talk test instead. Full sentences is easy. Short phrases is tempo. One or two words is hard. "The first week I ran my easy runs a full minute per km slower than before. That's how fast I'd been going."

Step 2: Keep 80% easy

She ran five days a week. Four of them were full-sentence effort. That meant she arrived at her one hard session fresh, which had never happened before.

Step 3: Log time and effort only

Her training log had two columns: minutes and an effort score from 1 to 10. No distance, no pace, no calories. Her coach could still see the week's load from the minutes. Her meals stayed on the plan she built with her dietitian, with a meal or snack before and after each run.

Step 4: Make speed a game

Once a week she ran a landmark fartlek on the river path. Hard to the next bridge or lamppost, easy to the one after, for 20 minutes. No timing. On trails she used trees and trail markers. After 10 weeks she ran a 10K race on a borrowed watch, only to record the result. She ran 2 minutes faster than her best from two years before.

Try it this week

Leave the watch at home for every run. Do four runs at full-sentence effort and one 20-minute landmark fartlek. Log minutes and a 1 to 10 effort score. Nothing else.