Why do you ask about age and gender?
Short answer
Both change what a realistic plan looks like. Age changes how long you need to recover between hard sessions, and both help the plan judge how realistic your target time is.
Key points
- With age, hard sessions usually need more recovery after them.
- Typical finishing times differ by age and gender, which helps judge your goal.
- Neither answer is used to limit what you can aim for.
Age
Fitness can keep improving at any age, but recovery tends to take longer as we get older. A plan for a 55-year-old usually spaces its hardest sessions further apart than one for a 25-year-old, and may add an extra easy day.
Gender
Average finishing times differ between men and women at every distance. Knowing it helps the plan compare your target with typical times for people like you, so it can say whether the goal is a stretch, about right, or very cautious.
What we do not do
Your answers are used to build your plan, as the privacy policy describes. They are never used for advertising.
In your plan
Your age sets how much recovery follows hard sessions. Together with gender it helps the plan check your target time, and its summary says how realistic that time looks.
Related questions
Why does a running plan ask for height and weight?
To set a safe starting load. Every stride lands with a multiple of your body weight, so your size helps the plan decide how quickly weekly running can grow. They are never used to set weight-loss targets.
Read the full answerHow do I pick a realistic finish time?
Start from a recent race or timed run and scale it to the new distance. With no recent time, leave a rough guess or make finishing comfortably your goal; your plan will tell you how realistic it looks.
Read the full answerWhy are rest days part of the plan?
Because fitness is built while you recover, not while you run. Training is the signal; rest is when your body responds to it. Rest days also lower the risk of the overuse injuries that end many training plans.
Read the full answerThanks. That helps us improve this answer.