The 8:30/Mile Strava Guy
Why most athletes are training at the wrong intensity - and what to do about it
You know this guy.
Maybe you are this guy.
He runs 2-3 days a week. He’s done races for a few years.
But he hasn’t gotten any faster…
His easy runs aren’t easy. His hard runs aren’t hard.
Everything lands in the same gray zone - uncomfortable enough to feel like work, not hard enough to actually force adaptation.
This is the 8:30/mile Strava Guy.
The effort that feels like training but isn’t producing results.
The 8:30/mile Strava Guy isn’t lazy. He’s just been optimizing for the wrong thing:
What other people think about your pace.
A Question From One Of My Athletes
A few months ago, an athlete sent this into our training group:
“My running form feels way better when I’m running faster — like 30-45 seconds faster than my casual Z2 pace.
I’ve tried replicating it at the slower pace but it’s just not the same.
Should I just send it on all my runs until the faster pace becomes easier?”
