Every season most of us look at the race calendar and start wondering what to enter next.

Before you enter anything, here is a simple way to think about it.

There are three zones you can train in. Comfort, stretch and panic.

There is also a fourth zone that a lot of experienced runners end up in, and it is worse than all three.

The comfort zone

This is the running you could do in your sleep. Same loop, same pace, same distance. It is where you recover, build your base and train consistently without getting injured.

Most of your running should happen here. The problem is that if you never leave it, your body has no reason to change.

It is a good place to be. It is just a bad place to stay all year.

The stretch zone

This is something you think you can do with the right preparation, but you are not 100% sure.

For some runners that is a first 5km. For others it is a marathon PB or a first 100km. For a lot of trail runners it is the build into an A race like UTA. Twelve to sixteen weeks of training that is clearly harder than normal, with a goal you are not certain of.

When the race is done, you drop back into your comfort zone and recover properly.

Being in a stretch block does not mean every run is a stretch. The stretch comes from the key sessions (the long run, the hills, the tempo) and from the load building week on week. Most of your running should still feel comfortable.

The panic zone

This is where the load is more than your body can comfortably recover from, and you can feel it. Legs that never feel fresh. Sleep not quite as good. Motivation dropping.

It is not a sustainable place to live, but a short, planned dip into the panic zone is how a peak block works. You pile on load for two or three weeks, feel flat, then taper and come out fitter.

If you stay there with no end date then things will start to go wrong. That is where the illness, the niggles that will not settle and the flat races come from.

Signs you have drifted into the panic zone without meaning to:

  • Your resting heart rate or heart rate variability (HRV) moving away from your normal baseline for more than a few days.
  • Sleep getting worse even though you are tired.
  • Motivation gone.
  • Niggles that keep coming back.

If you are seeing two or three of these and you are not in a planned peak block, back off for a few days. If a niggle has not settled after a week or two of easy running, get it assessed by a physio.

A panic zone race is one that is big enough that the build has to take you there. That might be something like stepping up to your first 100 miler after a few 100km races. Choose it deliberately, keep it short and give it an end date.

The grey zone

This is running that is not easy and not hard. It is comfortably hard, nearly every day.

It feels productive. But you are never running easy enough to recover properly and never running hard enough to push your fitness forward.

Grey zone runners tend to be tired a lot of the time without getting much faster.

The fix: 80/20 running

The best guide I know on getting out of the grey zone is Matt Fitzgerald’s book 80/20 Running. The idea is simple. Around 80% of your running should be at low intensity and around 20% at moderate to high intensity.

Fitzgerald’s point is that most recreational runners get this wrong. They spend too much of their running at moderate intensity, which is running in the grey zone.

In practice, if you run five times a week, the 20% is one or two key sessions. Everything else is easy.

During a base training block, you should be closer to running easy 100% of the time. The 80/20 split comes in once the race-specific build starts.

How to make sure your easy runs are easy

Most runners think their easy runs are easy. Most of them are not.

A few simple checks:

You can talk in full sentences.
You can breathe through your nose only.
Your heart rate stays in your aerobic zone. If you are not sure where that is, here is how to work out your heart rate zones.

Walk the hills if you need to. It will probably feel too slow. That is the point.

One warning. During a base block your watch may tell you your training is “unproductive”. It is not. Watches rely heavily on intensity, so easy running can look like you are standing still. Here is what your GPS watch stats actually mean, and which numbers are worth watching during base training.

Where I sit

After more than 40 years of racing, I now spend almost all of my time in the comfort zone. I run pretty much every day, partly to keep my brain happy and partly because my dogs need a daily jog. Staying injury free matters more to me now than being competitive.

To avoid getting completely stuck, I pick one race a year that pushes me into the stretch zone.

It does not always go to plan. In 2024 I ran the Kosci 100, and it turned into a panic zone race because I had not accepted that I was getting slower. I finished about four hours behind my plan.

In 2026 it was the Motatapu 50k in New Zealand. A steep and technical course, which is not my strength, but I enjoyed it a lot.

50km is now my sweet spot. A solid hard effort, and I can still run again two or three days later.

Plan your year around the zones

If you want a full method for laying out your year, I have written about how to create an annual running plan. The base block is your comfort zone, your lead-up races are a light stretch, and your goal race build is your big stretch.

For a more simple planning method, before you enter anything, write down three things:

Your one panic zone race.
Your one or two stretch races.
The months you will spend in your comfort zone.

My next year is no panic zone race, probably another 50km somewhere new, and the rest of the year running with the dogs.

If you cannot fill in the first line, that is fine. Not every year needs a panic zone race.

But if you look back at the last twelve months and cannot tell which zone you were in, it was probably the grey one.

If you want a plan that builds the zones in for you, the Streek UTA training plans start with a 12-week base block before a 16-week race build, from the 11km up to the Miler.