“I wish that more people that start running were able to have that mindset. Let go of the time. Just go for the feeling. Go for what your body feels like doing in the moment,” she says. “For a while that prevented me from running, too. I was like, ‘Oh, I’m not a fast runner, so I’m not a runner, right?’ And it wasn’t until I ran that half marathon, I was like, ‘Oh, wait. I am a runner. I just ran a half marathon.'”
Here’s Ferguson’s best advice for new runners, plus a speed workout to try at home.
Regular form check-ins
After a dynamic warmup of hopping, calf raises and gate openers to stretch the hips, we got to running — and chatting. The first thing we discuss is form. Ferguson shares her go-to form checklist:
- Run tall (“There’s nothing for you on the floor,” she says.)
- Take up space
- Land under your hips
- Elbows in
- Don’t overstride (it uses more energy!)
She also provides two quick form tests I can perform on my own:
- Shake out: To remove excess tension you might not even realize you’re holding onto, check in with a shake out, forcing you to relax your hands, arms and shoulders.
- Glute squeeze: To check that your lower body is moving efficiently, try squeezing your glute mid-run to make sure it’s activated, which ensures you’re using your body’s largest muscle to move forward.
Find your conversational pace
Throughout the 20-minute run, we both started to get breathy, but maintained a conversation, chatting about things like if she gets recognized in public (yes) and how she gets through a side cramp (two breaths in, two breaths out).
Running with Ferguson, it was easy to find my conversational, easy pace. For runners on their own, Ferguson recommends calling a friend to chat, while staying aware of your surroundings. “And if no one was available, I’d sing,” she says.
Add speed training
On the flip side of a conversational pace is training for speed. “Most runners do easy runs too fast and max pace too slow,” Ferguson says. She recommends having a designated “speed day” in your training plan. “You want to get to that max effort and then come back down,” she says. “You want to keep working on your VO2 max.”
VO2 max is a measure of oxygen uptake and refers to the maximum volume of oxygen the body can absorb during exercise, per the Cleveland Clinic. The metric varies between people, but in general, a higher VO2 max value represents a higher level of fitness.
“It’s important to make sure that you’re getting your VO2 max up so that you’ll have the cardiovascular endurance to sustain you for your big day,” Ferguson says.
For a speed day, Ferguson says you can do a HIIT workout, sprint on a track or try alternating between speed and recovery pace. She crafted this 20-minute speed day workout to try outside or on the treadmill:
20-minute speed day running workout
6 minute warm-up
0-1 minute: Walk (2-3.5 mph on the treadmill).
1-2 minutes: Slow walk doing knee hugs (grab below the knee) and traveling squats on both the left and right side.
2-5 minutes: Jog (3-4.5 mph on the treadmill) doing the following exercises: high knees, jog, heel flicks, jog.
5-6 minutes: Walk (2-3.5 mph).
Block 1 (9 minutes)
6-8 minutes: 20 seconds at speed pace (6.0 mph or higher on the treadmill) followed by 40 seconds at recovery pace (walk). Repeat twice.
8-11 minutes: 30 seconds at speed pace followed by 60 seconds at recovery pace. Repeat twice.
11-15:30 minutes: 45 seconds at speed pace followed by 90 seconds at recovery pace. Repeat twice.
Block 2 (4 minutes)
15:30-17:00 minutes: 45 seconds at speed pace followed by 45 seconds at recovery pace.
17-18 minutes: 30 seconds at speed pace followed by 30 seconds at recovery pace.
18-18:40 minutes: 20 seconds at speed pace followed by 20 seconds at recovery pace.
18:40-20 minutes: Cool down.
Courtesy Drip Drop
Run hills and strength train
In addition to not skipping speed drills, Ferguson also emphasizes the importance of running hills and implementing strength exercises into your training routine.
“Hills happen in real life. Resistance happens in real life, so you need to plan for those,” she says. “I would also say, and this is the hardest part and what a lot of runners don’t do, is they don’t plan and account for strength training,” she adds.
Planning for it involves “runner’s math,” because most people don’t want to be sore on long runs. She recommends adding two strength days into a running routine. And not just any strength training: Ferguson advises prioritizing “running-specific” strength training, such as single-leg work. “When you’re running, you’re popping off with a single leg, right?” she says. Other areas she recommends focusing on are the glutes, ankle mobility exercises and resistance band workouts to target smaller muscles.
Use metrics when helpful — but learn how they feel, too
During our run, Ferguson emphasizes focusing on feeling over a number. So instead of looking at my Apple Watch to clock my heart rate or pace, we check in on form and our ability to hold a conversation.
Ferguson says to use “whatever motivates you to move,” but for her, tracking time was stressful and added pressure. “If the metrics are what helps you, and staying on a certain time or pace helps you? All for it,” she says. “For me, I was not that person. My watch would be telling me, ‘You’re going too slow,’ but I’m like, ‘Watch, I’m running up a huge hill right now,'” she says. “Me and my watch would fight.”
So she worked on identifying the feeling associated with each metric, instead. For example: If you aim to train in a certain heart rate zone, pay attention to what that beats per minute feels like in your breath and energy level. “You’ll feel your heart rate picking up, or you’ll feel your breathing cadence change,” she says. “If that’s your driving force, then pay attention to feeling, so then you can be less attached to your device.”
Know that ‘bad runs are necessary’
As a Peloton instructor, Ferguson’s job involves motivating athletes both in studio and across the country. She notes, though, that “there are going to be days when you just don’t have it.”
She describes one marathon training day where she set out to run 16 miles, but she had to stop at 12.5. “I remember feeling so defeated,” she says. “Becs Gentry (a Peloton instructor) was like, ‘It’s a bad run. You needed that. You needed to feel all of that.'”
Ferguson advises runners to embrace the “bad” training day as a way to figure out what needs to be adjusted. “You need to have a bad run to be like, ‘OK, what do I have to fix?'” she says. “Bad runs are necessary to set you back up for success … Give yourself some grace in that.”
And the same sentiment goes for injuries and other setbacks. During her first half marathon training at the end of 2022, Ferguson suffered from a hip impingement and torn labrum, which eventually required hip surgery in May 2023.
“They had mailed me my bib for the half marathon, and so I taped it on my wall, right near my treadmill at home, and I was like, ‘I’m gonna get there,’” she says. Ten months later, she ran the New York City half marathon, then a full marathon in November 2024. “After the hip surgery, I was so grateful that it happened,” she says. “I learned so much more about my body and how to take care of it.”
Train progressively
When asked for the game-changing advice Ferguson received during her running journey, she offers three words: “Do it progressively.”
She says she thought in order to “be a runner” she needed to go out and run consecutive miles. But in reality, her training involved combining walking then running, while slowly increasing her run time and distance.
“To do it progressively is key to feeling good in your body, to allowing your body to adjust — all of that stuff was key for me,” she says.