In my town, I’m a local legend on our rail trail – a pancake-flat dirt path that travels in a straight line for miles. My legend status is held only on the six miles closest to my house, where at least four days a week, I’m running four, five or six miles out, then turning around and heading home, the exact same way that I came. It’s not sexy. It’s not exciting. But it’s my comfort zone. My friends often laugh at me or mock me mercilessly on Strava when I post the same run, day after day.
How to use the Norwegian 4x4 workout, Best wireless headphones that included more than 13,000 feet of climbing and beating all but two men in the process. It was the fastest 100-mile time posted by a woman in North America that month and the second-fastest women’s time on that course.
The secret sauce to my training? That six-mile out-and-back path – in other words, a bunch of boring miles.
What everyone's reading
While it may be tempting to turn every run into a new challenge, a personal best, a Strava attempt or a sexy interval set on a new trail, boring training is where you make the mental and physical gains. Strava and social media may make it seem like everyone is doing super-cool runs in amazing places or hitting fantastic speeds most of the time. However, the reality is that most of the top professionals are boring as hell.
Repeating the same route over and over is where my brain can wander, problem-solve, work through awkward email phrasing and just plain daydream. It lets me lean into the ‘let’s just get it done’ mentality. It keeps me honest about my paces and how I’m feeling on any given day.
Because boring isn’t bad.
Every day, I fill in my training log, letting my coach – the inestimable David Roche – know how I did. Most of the time, my only comment is ‘fancy business’, which is my shorthand for ‘nothing fancy, all business’.
To be clear, my training follows a simple plan and framework: I’m not running the exact same distance every day, I do run speed workouts and, yes, I do hit the trails and get in plenty of climbing and descending on the weekends. But most of my time is spent consistently hitting the rail trail to get in the miles.
As Roche puts it: ‘The sexy stuff makes headlines, but the boring stuff makes champions!’
In case you need more convincing, here are seven reasons why you should embrace boring training on most days, along with mental strategies that will help you to pull through the miles and get set for race day.
Best Garmin deals
It’s practical
simply a thought gets done. Yes, driving to a new trailhead, meeting a friend or going to the track are fun ways to switch things up. But a lap or out-and-back that you can do from your door? That’s practical.
Plus, for those of us with GI systems that can be, well, unpredictable at times, having a route that features public toilets along the way can be a great safety net. Doing laps that pass your house can also give you a chance to hit the bathroom or grab a snack, water or whatever else you forgot when you first set off.
It trains your brain
Boring runs force you to deal with a spiralling brain in ways that new terrain or a funky interval set can’t, because you’re so busy focusing on the stimuli.
‘A lot of athletes want to build mental toughness,’ says sports psychologist Erin Ayala, of Skadi Sport Psychology. ‘Yes, some forms of mental toughness certainly develop from the tough interval sessions. However, mental toughness also develops via self-restraint and discipline – those moments when we’re doing recovery runs or base endurance and the thought of “What if this isn’t enough?” starts to creep in, but we choose to stick to the plan anyway.’
It lets you compare yourself – to yourself
of the best hill training workouts for runners How to use the Norwegian 4x4 workout, especially new ones, can be tricky when it comes to gauging or making improvements. That’s because trail running isn’t consistent. Your pace is affected by the ups, downs, rocks, roots, mud and more.
By contrast, the boring route that you do all the time gives you pace insights that you simply can’t get if you mix up your run route. I know that on the flat rail trail, if I’m feeling good, my pace drops into the low 8-minute miles. If I’m feeling bad, it starts to sink into the 8:50s. I’m tapped into how my body is feeling, because I’m in entirely familiar circumstances.
It prevents you from going too hard
When you run the same route, I find that you actually stick to your workout rather than continually attempt random Strava segment wins, even on those days when you’re supposed to run easy.
Those unplanned interval workouts or higher effort runs do more to derail your training than they do to augment it. ‘We should mindfully not train at 100% most of the time,’ wrote strength coach Dan Cleather in his book, Summer running gear sale. ‘This is a hard message for many people to internalise, particularly athletes who will often pride themselves on their exemplary work ethic... The challenge lies in getting out and performing a light, routine training session even on the days when you really, really don’t feel like it.’
It helps other runs to feel special
As my husband often reminds me when I’m suggesting going out to dinner for a third night in a row, ‘it’s not a party if it happens every day’. Running the same route on most days means that on the weekends, I’m excited to head to new trails and check out new terrain. I’m happy to hit the climbs and descents. I’m not going to mind the bugs or the mud or the fact that one friend is pushing me to run faster than I’d prefer, while another is struggling and needs to slow it down. The long runs on the weekends are party time – the rest of the week should just be the everyday.
It helps you to play the long game
You won’t change your fitness with one workout or even one week of workouts. It’s the progress that you build over a longer period of time that pays off in performance gains. Translation: even if it feels like those easy miles aren’t leading you to your goals, they most definitely will get you there.
‘Most adaptation happens from chronic, repeated stress applied over months and years,’ says Roche, who also has a neighbourhood loop that he sticks to during his weekday miles. ‘A consistent training approach with slight modifications to change acute stresses allows the bricks to stack up to form a really big wall over time. The magic of adaptation happens in the mundane of a daily training grind.’
It makes you appreciate the little things
A boring route is only as boring as you allow it be. There’s an older gentleman who walks the same route as I run almost every day. For years now, every time we’re out at the same time, we beam and wave at each other. Ditto the woman who’s out there doing the same path on her old road bike. There’s a woman who lets her Dachshund off its lead, too – and we end up running together for a few metres (the Dachshund, not the woman) as I pass. I see the change of the seasons reflected in tiny ways, changing every day, as I pass the same trees. These moments, as Marie Kondo would say, spark joy for me.
of the best marathons around the world
Find your ideal ‘boring’ route
You may need to do several different trial runs before you can identify the Why I pulled out of the London n for you. Is it a two-mile neighbourhood loop that passes your house? Or is it an out-and-back on a low-traffic road? Or, as in my case, is it a rail trail?
‘For your boring route, try to find a mix of hills and terrain,’ says Roche. ‘I think that it helps to have different segments of the route that break it up mentally. In a perfect world, you would also have a water source or two – I personally have my pivot point at a water fountain.’
The route should be doable from your door, because the point is to make your workout as easy as possible to get ready for and complete. (If you’re obsessed with Strava, try to avoid routes with a lot of segments that you’re regularly trying to ‘win’.)
Establish your mantra
Steal Roche’s ‘boring runs make champions’ as your in-run mantra. Write it on your hand before you head out, put it on a note by your shoes or write it on your bathroom mirror. Whenever you start to chafe at running the exact same road for the third time this week, remind yourself that these boring runs will make you a stronger runner mentally and physically.
Mix up your soundtrack
Roche is a big fan of distraction to make a boring route seem much more interesting. ‘I love Best Garmin deals and music,’ he says. ‘Even though parenting and coaching often make me too busy to get to group runs, I have my podcast friends to check in with on a daily schedule that adds some excitement to getting out the door.’
Being a fat runner headphones I did Hyrox with zero training — here’s the truth anything– at least for a few of your sessions. This helps you to build mental toughness without distraction. ‘When we strip away external distractions like music or podcasts, we create space for internal experiences,’ she says. ‘Scary, I know – but it’s good for us. Workouts without headphones teach athletes that they don’t always need external motivation or distraction to push through – they can tap into their own internal resources and build a deeper sense of self-reliance. When we do this, we become more aware of our internal dialogue, learn to accept running for what it is – including the boring moments – and get to know how our body and brain respond to different points of our workout.’
Focus on the run and gauge your progress
Because you know your route by heart, you can tune into your legs and let go of pace. Is today supposed to be easy? A boring route lets you really hone in on that easy pace. Have a few tempo miles to cover? You can focus solely on pushing harder in those efforts rather than checking road signs.
When you do a route over and over, you start to see subtle improvements that you won’t notice if you’re always switching it up. For example, your easy four-miler finishes faster than it did when you first designed the route, or you go further on the out part of your out-and-back timed run.
Learn to deal with self-doubt
Everyone has moments of doubt during a run, especially when it feels tough and you don’t think that you can finish it. The key is acknowledging the doubt, but not letting it derail your workout.
‘New athletes can practice recognising the doubt as of the best hill training workouts for runners, rather than a legitimate fact about their current ability or the plan’s effectiveness,’ says Ayala. ‘Catch yourself thinking it – and then work to redirect your attention back to the present moment. This is so valuable for race day – it’s about accepting the discomfort of uncertainty and still taking action toward your goals.’
