I love Runna but I'm out

I've been training with Runna since May and have gotten really good results, with PB's that I would not have expected of myself. The UI is beautiful, and having strength and stretching baked into the app is amazing. It's an excellent concept, especially if you're a busy professional who wants to stay fit without earning a minor degree in personal training.

With all that being said, the plans are way too intense. Every week there are two hard runs (intervals + tempo) and the weekly long run usually has some sort of speed work built into it too which is by no means easy. When you're doing a 12 week plan to get in shape for a race, that's fine. I'm using it as ongoing training - I do race, but I don't train to race, I train to run because I like running and I want to be better. I don't have an end date. The way the plan works now is it seems to be geared more to quickly get you to a PB. That's fine, but after two thirds of a year of following the Runna plan I'm burnt out. I've reached out to support and their advice was to reduce my current estimated pace to make the workouts easier. That only addresses part of it, but the underlying plan structure stays the same. The optimal/balanced/lifestyle settings only change weekly mileage, and not the workouts either. My issue is the intensity of workouts, not mileage.

I like doing hard workouts, but not for three of the four runs a week. After about half a year of using Runna I started realizing that I was having to motivate myself to go for a run. The other issue is that when you get a cold, there's no intelligent way of adjusting your training. You can skip a week, but when you come back, the plan picks up where you would have been without skipping it, which makes it that much harder, getting you in a vicious lack of motivation cycle.

After the recent round of December colds, I'm out. Despite the advertised "Runna AI", I've only had plans adjust after hitting a new PB at a time trial or race. This combined with a lack of meaningful manual control/adjustments means that the plan is unable to adjust to real life, which is not ok.

I've since moved on to using Garmin Daily Suggested Workouts (DSW) and it's been working great. My training gets adjusted automatically if I get poor sleep or if I'm overdoing it in training. More importantly, most of the runs are easy and when I do get intervals or threshold runs, I feel 100% ready for them and feel like it's an appropriate level of challenge. DSW isn't perfect as it doesn't include the same scheduling and strength features as Runna does, but the base running training is miles ahead.

I know that Runna has new features dropping soon, but it's been like that ever since I started with Runna - new features are just around the corner to make it better, then when they do come, it's underwhelming. Runna AI was supposed to be a game changer, but fell flat for me. Not sure where the AI component is, if it only adjusts paces after a PB. Seems like everyone was putting AI in their products in 2024, so I wonder if it was FOMO on the part of the Runna team that lead them to put it in. The challenge though is if you promise intelligence (even if it's artificial), you have to deliver it. Sadly there was little if any evidence of artificial intelligence, unless you count basic spreadsheet-like formulas as AI.

Despite my gripes with Runna, I love the app and love the concept. I really wanted to give it a fair shake in hopes it got better, sadly it did not. Honestly, forget AI, if they just had a couple different training plans available (with one being less intense runs and more easy runs per week), I would probably still be a regular user. Like I said above, the UI is beautiful, and the other training features are wonderful. Unfortunately, the core feature, being the running training is not meeting my expectations. I hope it does get better for future users, but at this point I'm out.