My learnings about running

TL;DR:

• 🏃 Running without injury is possible—be progressive and listen to your body.
• 📅 Frequency beats volume: run more often with less distance per session.
• 💤 Recovery is as important as training—sleep well, eat well, and be patient.
• 🎯 Set clear objectives and plan accordingly, but don't overthink like a pro.

After practicing more than 10 years of football during my childhood, I switched to endurance sports around my 20s. These sports bring a lot of learnings and good outcomes, and I want to reflect on this in this article—primarily running, since it's the one I've pushed the most.

My Practice 🏃‍♂️

I started cycling around my 20s, at the end of my first engineering school year in Supaero. For running, I had always run a bit to keep form, but it was during my 3rd year in school that I started to set objectives and plan accordingly. Before that, I was just running without clear ideas and participating in races without dedicated preparation.

Running is a cool sport because you don't need to put in as many hours to see true progress and perform (which is the case for biking). Also, you just need your pair of shoes, and you can practice this sport everywhere in the world!

My Learnings & Practical Advice 💡

🩹 Running Without Injury/Pain is Possible

This may sound obvious, but too many people now run while being injured. If you do something correctly, it should be possible to run at your maximum without any injury or permanent pain.

Even if I say this, you can still have some pain when running, but this doesn't always mean an injury. I find two criteria good to know if I'm injured or not:

I am injured if one of these points is true:

• The morning after a session, when waking up and walking, I still feel a pain.
• When running, the pain exceeds (≥) 4/10.

If you happen to be injured, go see a doctor. It's not harder than that!

🐌 Be Really, Really Progressive

Progressiveness is the key to not getting injured. I really can't stress that enough. For someone who has never really run or made running part of other sports, this person should start with a not-too-ambitious objective. A 5km is a perfect way to start. Too many people rush into running a marathon, for example, and end up injured.

For example, someone who has never run and wants to prepare for a 5km: the first weeks should be really light, with alternation of walking and running. The running period per session should not exceed 1km.

Being PATIENT is really important in this sport!

📊 Prefer Frequency Over Volume

Again, it is far better to run 1km 7 times a week than running 7km once a week. Doing so, you let your body the time to recover and get stronger between each session.

💤 Training is Important, But Recovery is Even More

You have to eat well, sleep well, and avoid too many distractions, such as alcohol, when preparing for a race. Obviously, when you don't have any objective, you can relax and enjoy your beer. Even when preparing for a race, you can also have some time to relax. Too many people overthink this and live like a pro player.

You can also enjoy social events with your friends by having a beer. The impact it has is really minimal, and you gain much more by spending time with your friends!

🎯 Fix an Objective, Then Sketch a Rough Plan

I find it personally really important to have an objective. This helps structure your training and gives you mental help for hard sessions.

Fix your objective quite early (depends on the distance and the experience of the runner, but a race such as a marathon should be planned 6 months ahead).

I like to aim for a certain amount of kilometers at peak period. A good rule of thumb is that your weekly amount of kilometers should be at least the distance you're preparing. Example: you prepare a marathon, you should run at least 40km per week.

We are not professionals, and we don't need to fix exactly what will happen for all the sessions! We have normal lives, and we can have other commitments. Sport should not be the top priority!

Do preparatory races to try material and see what happens in a real race situation.

There are a lot of things common across distances, but all these should be adjusted according to your race. For example, when preparing an ultra trail of 100 miles, the last 3 weeks should be really easy because you will need freshness for the race. What we often say is that it's okay to lose a bit of physical fitness in order to retrieve freshness. The trade is worth it!

Example:

I prepared a 72km, 4300D+ trail running race in 2025. (I finished in 10:33, and I'm really happy with that!)

• Registered 6 months in advance
• Preparation lasted ~3 months
• Took ~3 weeks to gradually increase run volume to achieve 80km per week
• Did 2 preparatory races: 45km 2400D+ 2 months before, and another 1 month before
• Had 1 track session per week, 1 hill interval, and 1 long run

📝 Do Personal Journaling of Your Races

Write down your mistakes, what you did well, and what you did badly—both before and after the race. This helps you consciously process everything. Before the next races or before planning the next training cycle, feel free to review all these notes to avoid committing the same mistakes!

Conclusion 🎉

What is amazing is that all these learnings naturally adapt to other fields of our lives, like professional work for example. Not only does practicing such sports keep us fit, but it also brings learnings that naturally infuse into other domains.

So what are the reasons not to practice a sport? 😄