Reading a pace heatmap: fast days, easy days and the 80/20 rule

A run log is a list. A heatmap is a picture. When each day of the year is a tile coloured by pace, patterns show up that no table can reveal: the block before a race, the summer you took off, the month everything was hard.

What the colours mean

In Runtile the scale runs from a deep warm brown for your slowest runs to a bright coral for your fastest. The two ends are your own 10th and 90th percentile pace for the year, so the colours describe you, not an average runner. Rest days stay dark and quiet.

Switch to distance mode and the same tiles show short runs to long runs. Long runs are usually the darker tiles in pace mode and the brightest in distance mode. That is exactly how it should be.

What a healthy year looks like

Mostly dark warm tiles with a few bright ones each week. That is the 80/20 pattern: easy days build the engine, hard days sharpen it. If your grid is mostly bright coral, you are racing your training, and that usually ends in a plateau or an injury.

Other things to look for:

• A bright tile every Sunday. Your long run is your hard run. Fine if the rest of the week is easy.
• Bright tiles in a row. Three hard days back to back. The body needs an easy day between.
• A long gap after a bright block. Injury or burnout. The grid shows it a month before you would admit it.
• A streak of dark tiles into a race. A proper taper. Well done.

Effort versus pace

Pace is a proxy. A hill run at 6:00 can be harder than a flat run at 5:00. Runtile's Insights use heart rate to classify each run as easy, moderate or hard, and show the month as one bar with a verdict. Use the heatmap for the shape of the year and the effort bar for the truth of the month.