Running Plan Review Buena Vida Run Club's 24-Week Advanced Weight-Loss Running (6 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
Most people who run to lose weight believe the runs have to hurt to count. Faster burns more, an easy day is a wasted one, and a good session leaves you bent over with your hands on your knees. This plan asks you to set that belief down. Almost every mile here is at a pace you could talk through, 6 days a week, for a long time. Hard running is expensive: it takes days to absorb, and a week built from it can't hold much. Easy running is cheap enough to repeat tomorrow, and the day after, and that repetition is what builds the habit and the fitness that outlast the plan.
It's built for a runner who already has the habit. You should be running about 21 miles across 6 days now, with a long run near 6 miles. From there the week has a shape you'll learn fast. Saturday is the long run, which grows to 12.5 miles a half-mile or a mile at a time. Most Tuesdays end with 4 short strides (quick, relaxed pickups of about 100 meters). Monday and Sunday carry strength sessions, and Sunday is your day off from running. The plan opens with a stretch of nothing but easy running. Then a short fartlek (speed play, quick surges with easy jogging between) arrives every other Wednesday, and later a Monday tempo joins it (comfortably hard, short phrases rather than full sentences). Once the build is underway, every fourth week is lighter, until the last stretch, which holds the biggest weeks.
One morning matters more than most. The first tempo lands on the Monday after a lighter week, just as the miles climb back up. You'll feel fresh and restless, and that is exactly when runners go out too fast. Build into it gently, finish feeling you could have run another mile at that effort, lift afterward rather than before, and keep Tuesday soft. Get through that week calmly and the rest of the plan is mostly a matter of showing up.
Our full review of the plan follows. We grade every plan on the same 30-point benchmark, with each measure drawn from peer-reviewed sports-science research and proven coaching best practices.
Similar plans
Our Review
A fast start, a few weeks of hammering, sore joints, and a fade: if that is how losing weight has gone for you before, this plan is a different road. It asks an experienced runner for something slower. For 24 weeks you run 6 days a week, nearly all of it at conversational effort, and that share of easy running is the plan's best decision. Here is what the running contributes to losing weight: 6 days a week of mostly easy running that you can keep repeating for months, plus strength on Monday and Sunday, which helps protect your muscle as you lose weight. The runs are only part of what moves the scale, though, and most of that change comes from outside them. What the plan gives you is the running half, built so you can keep it up. The hard running is small and well placed: a short fartlek every other Wednesday once the opening stretch of easy running is done, and in the second half a Monday tempo of 2.2 to 2.5 miles. Monday's tempo and Wednesday's fartlek always have an easy Tuesday between them, and each one starts with a warm-up.
The gaps are few, and each is easy to plan around. Week 13 is the sharpest corner, where the first tempo arrives in the same week the miles jump back up from a cutback. The long run is still at its longest in the final week, so the plan ends on its biggest Saturdays rather than easing off. The plan is built in only two phases, and its run types are narrow (easy, long, fartlek and tempo, with no hills or intervals).
Run it if you already run most days and you like a week that repeats. If you want more variety or a race to aim at, a different plan will suit you better. The one change worth making is in week 13: run the first tempo, but keep the other easy days at week 11's length, so the new effort and the bigger week don't arrive at once.
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Structure
Does the plan build you up smartly?
Mostly, yes, with two soft spots. The plan is built in only two phases, Foundation and Build, so the second half reads as one long climb rather than a series of stages with their own jobs. The sessions themselves are written with care. Of the 20 hard sessions, 17 lay out a warm-up, a sustained stretch of harder running and a cool-down, and all 20 carry a note on what they are for. The exceptions are the first 3 fartleks, which hold only 30-second bursts with long floats and no steadier stretch of harder work. The steadier efforts arrive with the progressive fartlek in week 12.
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Prevention
Does the plan protect you from injury?
Nothing in this plan is in a hurry, and that patience is its strongest safeguard. Nearly all the running is easy, Tuesday's strides and the Monday and Sunday strength sessions are built in, and all 20 fartleks and tempos open with a warm-up. Strength training tends to lower injury risk. In week 20, a cutback week, the gentle Saturday recovery run is 9 miles. The first long run of the plan was 6. By then a run longer than your old big day counts as rest, which is what a patient build does to a runner. The one point to watch is week 13, when the first tempo arrives in the same week the miles climb back from 24 to 34.2 out of a cutback. Your lungs will usually be ready for that week well before your tendons and bones agree. If an ache lingers in the week or two after that first tempo, ease off for a few days rather than pushing through.
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Flexibility
What happens when you miss a day?
The plan ranks its days. The Saturday long run and the hard sessions (the Wednesday fartlek, and the Monday tempo once it arrives) come first. Before the tempo starts, and in cutback weeks, the Monday run comes next. The Tuesday to Friday easy runs are the flexible part of the week, and they're the ones that give way. Miss one and let it go: with 6 runs a week, a missing easy day barely registers, and adding its miles to the next day or to Saturday costs more than it saves. When a priority session gets bumped, move it and let an easy run go instead, keeping an easy day between hard efforts. If Saturday falls through, run the long run on Sunday, then swap Monday and Tuesday so the tempo follows an easy day, and in a fartlek week slide the fartlek from Wednesday to Thursday. If illness or travel takes most of a week, go back and run the last full week you finished again, Saturday long run included, before moving on.
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Variety
Are the workouts varied enough?
Within a narrow set of run types, the plan finds more variety than it looks like on paper. The core is easy running, long runs, fartleks and tempos, with no hill sessions, intervals or progression runs, and that narrowness costs it a little. The fartleks take several shapes: 30-second bursts with long floats early on, then ladder, descending, random and other versions that mix in harder, longer efforts. The tempo grows from 2.2 to 2.5 miles, strides show up most Tuesdays, and every hard session comes with clear instructions for warming up, the work and cooling down. Each effort is named (aerobic, recovery, tempo, threshold), and the notes pair each one with a cue you can feel in your breathing.
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.
The decision is made, and half a year of running now sits ahead of you. That is a long horizon. The way through it is one ordinary week at a time, with no need to look further. The early job is to find a rhythm your body can live with nearly every day. Learn what easy effort feels like underneath the urge to do more. Be patient with how slow these early days feel. There is plenty of time.
M 3mi Easy Run
3 miles at the easiest pace you can hold without walking, the first run of the plan. Today sets the upper limit on easy for 23 weeks of running 6 days a week. Finishing with the sense you could have gone faster is the right finish. Most 6-day runners get pulled faster within a few days because the legs feel good. The plan works only if that doesn't happen.
Tu 3mi Easy Run
3 miles, conversational throughout. What this run buys is the discipline to do tomorrow's run at the same effort. The accumulation matters. Today's pace doesn't. If you finish feeling fresh and barely worked, it did its job.
W 3mi Easy Run
A properly easy 3. Most runners on a build like this lose the plot in the middle third of an easy run. Notice if you drift. Pull it back without negotiating.
Th 3mi Easy Run
Today is 3 of unhurried running. Heart rate doesn't have to climb across the run for the run to count. If it's climbing, the pace is wrong. Miles like these are where your aerobic base builds, one easy run at a time.
F 3mi Easy Run
Cover 3 at a pace you could hold all day. Notice your shoulders by mile two. If they're high, the pace is asking too much. The job today is gentle repetition, the kind of running that adds up without ever feeling like work.
Sa 6mi Long Run
6 miles at easy effort, the first long run of the plan. Saturday is your long-run day from here on. Treat the pace as more important than the distance. If you finish feeling you had more to give, you got it right. In a 6-day week the long run sits next to 5 easy days, so the way you pace today shapes how you wake up Sunday. By the later cutback weeks, even the lighter Saturdays run longer than this.
Su Strength Training
Nothing visible changes in the early weeks of a new schedule, and that can feel like nothing is happening. It is. Under the surface, the heart and legs are getting used to running most days, and each easy run adds a little to what the next one can do. None of it is dramatic on a single day, but it adds up. Keep the easy effort easy and let the body catch up in its own time.
M 3.5mi Easy Run
A properly easy 3.5. The middle third is where easy runs tend to speed up without asking. Check your breathing there, around the midpoint. If it has quickened, ease back until it slows again.
Tu 3.5mi Easy Run
A properly easy 3.5. The middle of an easy run is where pace discipline slips. Check in at halfway and settle it back down if it drifted. Easy days exist to let the harder days do their work, and they only work if they stay easy.
W 3.5mi Easy Run
3.5 at fully aerobic effort. Aerobic just means the easy zone where you can breathe through it and hold a conversation, the pace where your body has plenty of oxygen for the work. Pace tends to creep once the legs warm up and the mind wanders off. Check in around the midpoint. If you have drifted, slow down and let it go.
Th 3.5mi Easy Run
3.5 miles, conversational throughout. Run it so that tomorrow's easy run feels exactly like this one. The accumulation matters. Today's pace doesn't. Feeling flat on an easy day is normal and says nothing about your fitness.
F 3.5mi Easy Run
3.5 at the slowest pace that still feels like running. If you're chasing the same loop or the same time, switch the watch off the pace screen for 10 minutes and see what the body picks.
Sa 6.5mi Long Run
Saturday long: 6.5 miles at easy effort, the longest run so far. The deficit is a weekly arithmetic, not a single-run punishment. Running this one harder or longer than asked won't speed anything up, and it costs you the next few days. Let the easy effort carry you the whole way and finish with something left. Most runners find the closing mile of a new distance feels different, and that is normal.
Su Strength Training
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All 24 weeks in the app
Daily coaching notes, nutrition guidance, reschedule logic, and strength placement.
Plan Strengths
- Nearly every mile is at conversational effort, gentle enough to repeat 6 days a week for months.
- Hard running is small and carefully placed: never two hard days in a row, and a warm-up on every session.
- The Saturday long run grows to 12.5 miles in small steps, often repeating a distance before moving up.
- 2 strength sessions a week and regular strides are on the calendar.
- The notes on every easy run teach how easy should feel, from the talk test to catching the drift in the middle miles.
Weaknesses & Gaps
- You finish on your longest Saturdays: the long run is still at 12.5 miles in the final week, with no easing off before the plan ends.
- Week 13 stacks the first tempo on a sharp jump in volume out of a cutback.
- You'll get little practice at holding a harder effort in the first 3 fartleks, which are only 30-second bursts with long floats.
- The plan is built in only two phases, Foundation and Build.
- The run types are narrow: no hills, intervals or progression runs.
What's missing
The plan ends on its biggest weeks, with the long run still at its longest in week 24. Be ready to ease off yourself: if your legs stay heavy for several days in a row during weeks 21 to 24, trim that week by about a fifth, and give yourself an easy week after the last Saturday before starting anything new. It also leaves out hill sessions, intervals and progression runs. If you want a little more range, run some of your strides up a gentle hill now and then, which adds a different kind of work without adding a hard day to the week.
What the science supports
Strength training keeps muscle while you cut
Strength sits on Monday and Sunday in all 24 weeks, so it never drops out while the running climbs. Strength training during weight loss protects muscle, so a bigger share of what comes off is fat rather than muscle. The trials are mostly in overweight and older adults, so the size of that effect in a trained runner is less certain. With 6 running days already on the calendar, those 2 sessions are how the plan looks after muscle while you lose weight.
Sardeli et al. 2018; Murphy & Koehler 2021; Lopez et al. 2022
Easy miles do most of the work
Nearly all your miles sit at conversational effort. About 96 percent of your running volume stays easy, while the weekly total climbs from 21 miles in week 1 to 43.5 in week 23. Easy running is the base that carries the harder work and helps the body adapt to it. Here that base holds up a short Wednesday fartlek every other week from week 6 and a Monday tempo from week 13, so the few hard minutes land on legs ready for them.
Explosive work can make you more efficient
Every Tuesday from week 3 through week 24, the run ends with 4 strides of 100 meters, short relaxed pickups to a quick but controlled speed. Short explosive work such as jumps and sprints can make each stride cost less energy at a given pace. Results are mixed, though, and strides themselves have not been tested directly. Treat them as low-cost practice at running fast and relaxed. At a few minutes a week, strides are among the cheapest work in the plan.
Paavolainen et al. 1999; Turner et al. 2003; Eihara et al. 2022
Mileage alone doesn't measure your load
Weekly mileage alone misses part of how hard you are training. How the distance is packed into single runs, and how fast you run it, add stress the total hides. This plan keeps both in check. Weekly running climbs to 43.5 miles in week 23, but it is spread over 6 days. The long run grows in small steps to 12.5 miles, and nearly every mile stays at conversational effort.
Paquette et al. 2020; Fredette et al. 2022; Schuster et al. 2025
Keep easy days easy, hard days hard
The hard days in this plan are few and clearly hard. A short Wednesday fartlek arrives every other week from week 6, and a Monday tempo joins most weeks from week 13, with an easy Tuesday between them. All the other runs stay conversational. Trained runners who keep easy days genuinely easy and save their effort for a few clearly hard sessions may improve more than those who run everything at a medium effort. This plan sits at the easy end of that split.
Stöggl & Sperlich 2014; Casado et al. 2022; Kenneally et al. 2018
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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