Running Terms
A selective glossary for structured training.This page is not a dictionary. It is a small set of terms that help runners understand the work more clearly.
If a term does not change how you train, it does not belong here.
Threshold is steady work just below the point where fatigue rises sharply. It should feel controlled enough to hold for extended blocks without straining.
The goal is not to prove fitness. The goal is to make a strong pace feel normal.
Economy is the cost of moving at a given pace. Training improves economy by making the same pace require less energy, less tension, and less waste.
This is why a pace that once felt expensive eventually feels ordinary.
Fuel before harder sessions is not just calories. It helps the body feel resourced enough to organize and engage under load.
A banana or gel before threshold is often less about energy in the abstract and more about giving the system permission to work.
Sleep is where most training adaptation occurs. Deep sleep supports physical repair. REM sleep supports nervous system recovery and coordination.
The most important factor is consistency — especially around threshold days, long runs, and race weeks. Most watches estimate sleep stages, but total sleep and stable timing matter more than perfect stage numbers.
For most runners training seriously, 7–9 hours is the useful range.
Consistency is the ability to repeat good work over long periods of time. One perfect session matters far less than months of uninterrupted training.
The point is not to collect impressive workouts. The point is to keep the sequence alive.
A session is one piece of training work: threshold blocks, long steady efforts, track repetitions, or recovery running.
Sessions repeat across weeks and cycles. The same session may appear on the practice board, in an athlete record, on the speed page, or in the training plan.
The field is the physical training environment. It is not a club, a team, or a social identity.
It is simply a place where runners come to train seriously. People may come and go. The work remains consistent.
Training develops through cycles. A cycle is a block of time with one governing job.
Sessions make the most sense when read inside the cycle they belong to. The same threshold session may mean something different in Organization than it does in Compression.