Running Plan Review Buena Vida Run Club's 24-Week Advanced Weight-Loss Running (5 days)
Who’s behind this review? Buena Vida is a running app made by David Cole, a Seattle runner & triathlete who led design and research for Amazon’s Halo fitness band. This is one of Buena Vida’s own plans, so we have an obvious interest in how it compares. It’s scored on the same 30 measures as every plan we review, each tied to published research, and its weaknesses are published below. AI does the first scoring and draft, then every claim is checked against its studies. No plan author pays to be reviewed, and we run no ads. See a mistake? Email David at corrections@buenavida.run · How we score →
Plan at a Glance
You already run. About 27 miles a week, 5 days out of 7, which means the habit is built and the real question is what to do with it. Most runners who want to lose weight reach for the same answer: run harder. Make every run hurt a little, so it feels like it counts. This plan asks for something else, and it asks firmly.
It opens with two full blocks of easy running before anything harder appears. After the first couple of weeks, 4 short strides join the Tuesday run. Strength sits on Wednesday and Saturday, and Sunday is the long run. Every fourth week the mileage drops back by about a quarter, so the three weeks before it can turn into fitness rather than fatigue. Only then does a harder Thursday arrive: a tempo run (comfortably hard, where short phrases work but full sentences don't), later trading weeks with fartlek, where surges and easy jogging take turns. Even in the biggest stretch, some Thursdays stay easy so Sunday gets your best legs.
Here is what the plan does for weight loss. It gives you a large amount of running you can keep up for months, nearly all of it at the pace you can talk at, easy enough that one day's run doesn't spoil the next. Weekly mileage climbs into the low 60s and the long run goes past 20 miles. The two strength sessions protect what you want to keep: when you're losing weight, strength work helps make sure what comes off is fat rather than muscle. Be clear-eyed about the limit, though. Most of the change on the scale is decided outside the runs. The running is the part this plan can promise.
In the biggest weeks, Monday is 10 easy miles the morning after a Sunday past 20. Your legs may feel surprisingly good, and the pull will be to make the run count. Keep it slow. Tuesday's strides, Thursday's session and next Sunday's long run all lean on Monday staying easy. Run it that way and the miles keep stacking: more fitness, sturdier legs, and a habit that holds.
Below is the full Buena Vida review. Every plan is held to the same detailed, 30-point benchmark, with each measure traced back to peer-reviewed sports-science research and proven coaching best practices.
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Our Review
Run this plan. It suits the runner who knows how to hurt and wants the scale to move faster than it is: it takes that drive and spends it on volume instead of intensity. Mileage climbs from 27 to the low 60s without a sudden jump anywhere, every fourth week is a cutback, each Thursday tempo or fartlek sits 3 days before Sunday's long run, and nearly every mile is at conversational effort. That gives you a large, sustainable amount of running plus strength to protect muscle while you lose weight. Most of what happens on the scale is decided outside the runs, and this plan doesn't pretend otherwise.
The gaps are small, and you can plan around each one. The long runs keep climbing almost to the end, so the biggest Sunday comes in the second-to-last week rather than with some room before the finish. The first tempo run shares its week with a rebound to new mileage. The menu of run types is short. None of these should stop you. Ease into the first tempo week, and let the plan do the slow, unglamorous work it does well.
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Structure
Does the plan build you up smartly?
Six blocks, each with its own job, carry you from all-easy running to the plan's fullest weeks. The first 8 weeks are easy running only, tempo arrives in week 9 and fartlek joins it from week 13, and each block is named and explained as it comes. Two numbers sum up its thinking: the longest run is 22 miles, and the whole plan holds only 10 hard sessions. The volume is the work. Those 10 sessions come written out in full, warm-up to cool-down, each with a note on what it is for.
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Prevention
Does the plan protect you from injury?
Volume, not speed, carries the load here, a sound call for a runner building toward weeks in the low 60s. Easy runs, plus the warm-ups and cool-downs around Thursday's work, make up nearly all the mileage. Easy volume is the base that carries a runner, and big jumps in mileage tend to raise injury risk. This plan avoids those jumps, follows each Thursday session with an easy Friday, and wraps every tempo and fartlek in an easy warm-up and a cool-down. Mileage rises a little at a time from 27 at the start to just over 61 near the end, with a lighter week closing each block. When one of those weeks arrives and the scale doesn't budge, it can feel like lost progress, but that break from the climb is built in on purpose. Strength twice a week tends to help too. The one soft spot is week 9: the first tempo run shows up in the same week mileage climbs back from the cutback to a new high, so two new demands land together. Take that first tempo gently (hold the effort well below what you could manage) and let the next ones carry the growth.
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Flexibility
What happens when you miss a day?
The week can lose a run and barely notice, provided the right one goes. Sunday's long run and the Thursday tempo or fartlek are the priority sessions, and Monday's easy run comes next. Tuesday and Friday are the runs that bend. If life takes a day, let one of those go and don't squeeze it back in by doubling up. Wednesday and Saturday are already free of running, and with 5 runs in the week, a missed easy run simply becomes your day off. If a nagging ache is behind the missed runs, treat it as a signal and run clearly less for about a week, trimming Tuesday and Friday first, rather than stopping altogether. The cutback every fourth week is a natural place to reset if a stretch goes sideways.
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Variety
Are the workouts varied enough?
There's enough here to hold your interest across 24 weeks. Most weeks are easy runs and a long run, with 4 strides on Tuesdays after the first 2 weeks. Strides cost almost nothing and give you a regular taste of quick, relaxed running. Once the harder Thursdays begin, they bring either a tempo run, with the tempo stretch itself growing from 5 to 7.5 miles, or one of three fartlek shapes: a ladder of lengthening surges, short bursts with long easy floats, and a descending set that gets shorter and quicker. Hills, faster intervals and progression runs don't appear. Over the long build, some sameness is the price of the calm.
Workouts
Every Buena Vida training plan comes with detailed coaching notes and live workout guidance. Tap any workout to preview the notes for that day.
24 weeks is a long horizon, and starting it steadily matters more than starting it fast. Running most days of the week asks the body to organize its week around running again, and that takes longer than the legs do. Let these opening days be about settling in. The fitness comes because you are here for it. All this week asks of you is to show up and let the rhythm find your feet.
M 5mi Easy Run
5 miles easy to open the plan. Conversational pace, no exceptions. Most advanced runners drift faster on day one of a new block. Hold the leash today. Miles like these are where your aerobic base builds, one easy run at a time.
Tu 5mi Easy Run
5 miles easy on tired legs from yesterday. Today is just continuous easy running. The job today is gentle repetition, the kind of running that adds up without ever feeling like work.
W Strength Training
Th 5mi Easy Run
5 miles at fully aerobic effort. A Thursday with no harder session feels light. That is the point of the Settle In block. Easy days exist to let the harder days do their work, and they only work if they stay easy.
F 4.5mi Easy Run
4.5 miles at easy effort, the shortest run of the week. Strength follows tomorrow, so this run stays relaxed. Let the legs recover. This run keeps the rhythm of training alive without over-taxing your legs.
Sa Strength Training
Su 7.5mi Long Run
7.5 miles easy, conversational throughout. This is the first long run of the plan. Settle into the pace that lets you finish the last mile feeling like you could have kept going. The long run climbs from here to 22 miles by week 23. Finish with the sense that another mile was possible. That margin is the point. Walking briefly is fine if you need it.
The body is already changing, even if the only thing you can feel is some heaviness by Thursday. That heaviness is the legs getting used to running most days, not a warning to hold back. The changes inside run on a slow clock, so what this stretch builds shows up later. Keep the easy days truly easy and let slow running do what only slow running can do.
M 5.5mi Easy Run
5.5 miles easy. Heaviness from Sunday's 7.5-mile long run is normal in the first 10 minutes. It loosens. Runs like this build the engine that everything else in the plan draws on.
Tu 5.5mi Easy Run
5.5 miles aerobic. Strides, short pickups that are quick and relaxed, join the Tuesday run next week. For now, build the habit of finishing this run fresh. Keep the effort at a pace where full sentences come without strain.
W Strength Training
Th 5.5mi Easy Run
5.5 miles midweek easy. Watch the pace inside the second mile. Most runners pick it up here without noticing. The fitness from today arrives later, banked and spent on the harder days ahead.
F 5mi Easy Run
5 miles, short and easy. Sunday's 9-mile long run comes after Saturday strength. Today is for sleep tonight, not effort now. Consistency is the actual workout here, and the pace is just how you protect it.
Sa Strength Training
Su 9mi Long Run
9 miles easy. The long run is 1.5 miles longer than last Sunday. Start slow enough that mile 6 feels familiar. The long run stretches endurance by keeping you out there longer, not by going faster.
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All 24 weeks in the app
Daily coaching notes, nutrition guidance, reschedule logic, and strength placement.
Plan Strengths
- The first 8 weeks are all easy running, so the harder work lands on a real base.
- Easy running makes up nearly all of the mileage, the kind you can keep doing week after week.
- A cutback every fourth week, 6 in all, gives your legs a regular break from the climb.
- Mileage climbs steadily from 27 to the low 60s with no sudden jumps.
- Each of the 10 Thursday sessions opens with a warm-up, ends with a cool-down and says in its note why it's there.
- Strides every Tuesday after the first 2 weeks and 2 strength sessions every week, which helps protect muscle while you lose weight.
Weaknesses & Gaps
- The long runs keep building almost to the end, with the biggest Sunday in week 23, just before the final week.
- The first tempo run in week 9 arrives the same week mileage jumps back from a cutback to a new high.
- Only four kinds of runs (easy, long, tempo, fartlek), with no hills, faster intervals or progression runs.
- No session carries a goal-pace target, a small gap for a goal that isn't a race.
What's missing
Tempo runs and fartleks fill every harder day, with no hills, faster intervals, or progression runs anywhere in the plan. For a weight-loss goal that matters less than it would for a race, since the easy volume is doing the main work. If the sameness wears on you, swap one fartlek Thursday per block for short hill surges with an easy jog down. It keeps the hard day on Thursday, where the plan already protects it, and gives your legs a different kind of strength to build.
What the science supports
Strength training keeps muscle while you cut
This 24-week plan keeps strength on the calendar the whole way through, twice a week. When adults lose weight, strength training protects muscle, so more of the loss comes from fat than from lean tissue. Most of that evidence comes from overweight and older adults, so the size of the effect in runners who are already lean is less certain. Keeping both sessions is a simple way to look after the muscle your running relies on.
Sardeli et al. 2018; Murphy & Koehler 2021; Lopez et al. 2022
Easy miles do most of the work
The first 8 weeks hold no tempo or fartlek, only easy running, with a few relaxed strides on Tuesdays from week 3. Easy running is the base that carries harder training and helps the body adapt to it. This plan keeps about 96 percent of its volume easy, so when the Thursday tempo arrives in week 9, it lands on a deep base of easy miles.
Consistent mileage is linked to fewer injuries
Higher, consistent weekly mileage is generally linked to fewer injuries rather than more, though the evidence is observational and not every study agrees. This plan starts at 27 miles in week 1 and reaches 61.5 miles in week 23, easing back every fourth week along the way. Consistency is the part that pattern rests on, and almost 6 months of patient building supplies it.
Fixed plans need built-in lighter weeks
Six four-week blocks make up the 24 weeks, each closing with a lighter week. Running that piles up without relief tends to raise injury and illness risk. On a fixed plan with no coach adjusting it, a scheduled lighter week is the simplest way to build that relief in. Here it comes every fourth week, inside the 3 to 5 week range coaches commonly use, and the final week eases off too.
Strength training makes running more efficient
Strength work appears twice a week throughout the plan, on Wednesday and Saturday. In trained distance runners, strength training usually improves running economy, the energy it costs to hold a given pace. Both sessions sit on days with no run, so they add to the running instead of crowding it. They are central to how this plan works.
Blagrove et al. 2018; Balsalobre-Fernández et al. 2016; Šuc et al. 2022
Get the full plan in the app
Buena Vida Run Club members get access to this full 24 week plan, plus 250 more as part of their membership. Training with Buena Vida offers detailed daily workout notes, integrated nutrition, live voice coaching, weight loss plans, and easy calendar management for life's hiccups.
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