DARK MILE CO. — RESOURCE SERIES
Glossary of Effort
Every term serious runners use — defined without the filler. Not a dictionary. A working vocabulary for people who treat training like a craft.
A
Aerobic Base · PHYSIOLOGY
The foundation of all endurance fitness. Your body's capacity to sustain effort using oxygen — burning fat and carbohydrates efficiently at lower intensities. A deeper aerobic base raises the pace at which all future work happens.
→ Built through high-volume, low-intensity training over months.
Aerobic Threshold · PHYSIOLOGY
The upper edge of aerobic effort — the pace at which your body shifts from primarily fat metabolism to increasingly relying on carbohydrates, and lactate begins to accumulate. Training below this point builds base. Above it, you're in a different physiological conversation.
→ Roughly the fastest pace at which you can hold a full conversation.
Adaptation · TRAINING
The entire point of training. When you apply stress to the body, it responds by becoming better equipped to handle that stress. Adaptations include: increased mitochondrial density, greater capillary networks, improved fat oxidation, stronger tendons and connective tissue. Adaptation requires adequate recovery — without rest, stress just accumulates.
→ Takes 8–12 weeks of consistent training to become measurable.
Active Recovery · RECOVERY
Low-intensity movement — easy walking, light cycling, gentle swimming — performed on rest days. Increases blood flow to muscles without adding training stress, accelerating the removal of metabolic waste and delivery of nutrients. Not a workout. A recovery tool.
→ Heart rate should stay well below aerobic threshold.
Aerobic Capacity (VO₂max) · PERFORMANCE
The maximum rate at which your body can consume oxygen during exercise. VO₂max sets your ceiling — but running economy and lactate threshold determine how much of that ceiling you can use for extended periods. Trainable, but also significantly influenced by genetics.
→ High VO₂max is necessary but not sufficient for elite performance.
C
Consistency · MINDSET
The single most important variable in long-term athletic development. Not the hardest workout. Not the perfect nutrition plan. The accumulated volume of sessions done reliably over months and years, compounding into fitness that can't be replicated any other way. One missed run doesn't matter. One missed month does.
→ The foundation of the Dark Mile philosophy.
Cumulative Fatigue · TRAINING
The buildup of fatigue across multiple training sessions when recovery is insufficient. Distinguished from normal post-run soreness by its persistence and impact on performance. A training block is designed to accumulate fatigue intentionally — but must be followed by a deload or recovery week for adaptation to occur.
→ Planned fatigue + recovery = fitness. Unplanned fatigue = injury or burnout.
Cadence · PERFORMANCE
Steps per minute. Higher cadence (typically 170–185 spm) generally reduces overstriding, lowers impact forces, and improves running economy. 180 spm is often cited as a target, though optimal cadence varies by individual. Increasing cadence by 5–10% can meaningfully reduce injury risk over time.
→ Don't chase a number — improve gradually and let it feel natural.
D
Discipline · MINDSET
Doing the work without requiring motivation to begin. Motivation is an emotion — it comes and goes. Discipline is a system: a structure that removes the question of whether you'll run today. It's already decided. The alarm goes off. You go.
→ Not inspiration. Not talent. The thing that doesn't need an audience.
Deload Week · TRAINING
A planned reduction in training volume — typically 30–50% — after a hard training block. The deload is where supercompensation happens. You trained hard; your body needs the lower stimulus to absorb that training and emerge stronger. Skipping deloads is how runners plateau or break.
→ Every 3–4 weeks of progressive loading, plan a deload week.
DOMS · PHYSIOLOGY
Delayed onset muscle soreness. The ache you feel 12–48 hours after a hard effort — especially after downhill running, new movements, or unusually high volume. DOMS is caused by microscopic muscle damage and is a normal part of adaptation. It does not mean injury; it means you stressed the tissue enough to trigger repair.
→ Mild DOMS: train through it. Severe or localized pain: stop and assess.
E
Running Economy · PERFORMANCE
How efficiently you use oxygen at a given pace. Two runners with identical VO₂max can perform very differently based on running economy. Improving running economy — through form, strength work, and accumulated mileage — means running faster at the same physiological cost.
→ Often more trainable than VO₂max, and equally important.
Easy Effort · TRAINING
The intensity at which the majority of your training should occur. Not comfortable-ish — genuinely easy. Slower than you think, most of the time. Conversational pace. Heart rate in Zone 1–2. Runners who can't have a full conversation on their 'easy' runs are running too hard.
→ Easy enough to do every day without accumulating fatigue.
L
Lactate Threshold · PHYSIOLOGY
The pace at which lactate accumulates in your bloodstream faster than your body can clear it. Training at and around lactate threshold improves your ability to process lactate, allowing you to sustain faster paces longer. Threshold runs — comfortably hard, sustainable for 20–60 minutes — are the primary vehicle for this adaptation.
→ Roughly your 1-hour race pace. Hard but controlled.
Long Run · TRAINING
The cornerstone of distance running training — a weekly run at easy effort that is significantly longer than your average daily run. Builds aerobic base, teaches fat oxidation, develops mental endurance, and conditions your musculoskeletal system for sustained load. The long run is almost always run slower than race pace.
→ Resist the urge to run it at goal race pace. Easy and long is the point.
P
Polarized Training · TRAINING
A training distribution model: ~80% of volume at low intensity, ~20% at high intensity, with minimal time in the moderate 'grey zone.' Research consistently supports polarized training for endurance development. The moderate zone creates fatigue without delivering sufficient adaptation.
→ The runner who goes easy on easy days makes harder hard days possible.
Progressive Overload · TRAINING
Systematically increasing training demand over time. The engine of adaptation. Your body only adapts to stress that exceeds what it's already accustomed to. Too fast: injury. Too slow: stagnation. The 10% rule exists because most runners escalate too aggressively.
→ Slow is sustainable. Sustainable is progress.
Periodization · TRAINING
The structured organization of training into phases — base, build, peak, and taper — each with a distinct purpose. You cannot train all qualities simultaneously at high intensity. Periodization sequences them: build the base first, layer in speed, sharpen for the race, then recover.
→ Your training plan is the vehicle. Periodization is the map.
R
Recovery · RECOVERY
The process by which the body repairs training-induced damage and rebuilds stronger. Recovery is not passive — it is an active, essential component of training. Sleep, nutrition, hydration, and low-stress days are not luxuries for serious athletes. They're the mechanism by which fitness actually happens.
→ You don't get stronger during the run. You get stronger in the hours after.
RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion) · TRAINING
A subjective 1–10 scale of how hard an effort feels. Used alongside pace and heart rate to calibrate training intensity. RPE matters because identical paces can feel dramatically different depending on heat, fatigue, stress, and terrain.
→ Easy run: RPE 3–4. Threshold: RPE 6–7. Race pace: RPE 8–9.
S
Supercompensation · PHYSIOLOGY
The mechanism behind all training gains. After sufficient stress and recovery, the body rebuilds slightly above its previous baseline. Miss the recovery phase and you capture only the fatigue, not the adaptation.
→ Stress + recovery = fitness. Stress alone = damage.
Specificity · TRAINING
You adapt to the exact stress you apply. If you want to run faster, you must run fast. If you want a deep aerobic base, you must accumulate easy miles. The body is highly specific in how it adapts — which means training selection matters enormously.
→ Train for the race you're running, not just 'fit in general.'
Sleep · RECOVERY
The most powerful recovery tool available — and the most underused by serious athletes. During sleep, growth hormone is released, muscle protein synthesis peaks, and neural patterns are consolidated. No supplement replaces it.
→ Elite runners average 9–10 hours per night. Most recreational runners get 6–7.
T
Taper · TRAINING
The period of reduced training volume in the final 1–3 weeks before a race. Tapering allows accumulated fatigue to dissipate while fitness is retained. Fitness built over months doesn't disappear in two weeks, but fatigue does.
→ Trust the taper. The miles are already in your legs.
Tempo Run · TRAINING
A sustained run at or near lactate threshold pace — comfortably hard, typically 20–40 minutes. Builds your ability to sustain higher paces by teaching your body to clear lactate more efficiently. The effort where you're working but could maintain it for considerably longer.
→ RPE 6–7. You can speak in short sentences, not paragraphs.
Training Load · TRAINING
The combined stress of all training — volume multiplied by intensity. Managing training load means balancing how much you're doing with how hard you're doing it. High volume AND high intensity simultaneously is how overtraining injuries happen.
→ Adding a hard workout? Reduce total mileage that week.
Z
Zone Training · TRAINING
A framework for organizing training intensity using heart rate or effort zones (typically 1–5). Zone 1–2 is easy/aerobic; Zone 3 is the grey zone; Zones 4–5 are threshold and above. The value of zone training is the discipline of actually staying in them, particularly on easy days.
→ Most runners spend too much time in Zone 3. Go easier on easy days. Go harder on hard days.
DARK MILE CO.
Built in the Dark. · darkmileco.com