19 October 2026

Every hobby comes with its own words and running is no exception. The good news is that none of them are complicated, nobody will quiz you on them, and you already know the ideas behind most of them. This glossary covers the words you are most likely to hear at a club run, from the warm up at the start to the cool down at the end, in plain English.

Why runners have their own words

Runners talk about pace, laps and splits for one simple reason: those words describe how a run feels, quickly. Easy pace tells you everything about the next ten minutes without a number in sight. One lap or two? is a friendlier question than a distance in kilometres. Learning a handful of these words is less like study and more like learning the names of the regulars: it happens naturally, and it helps you feel at home sooner. If the idea of a first group run makes you nervous at all, our guide to run club etiquette shows how low pressure it really is.

Before the run: warm up

A warm up is simply the gentle movement that eases your body into running: a short walk, a few leg swings, some easy strides before the real pace begins. It raises your heart rate slowly and tells your legs what is coming. At our Thursday Morning Run the timing is built in: people meet at Glenhaven Oval from 5:45am for a 6:00am start, and that quarter of an hour of chatting and shuffling about is warm up enough.

You may also hear dynamic stretching, which means stretches on the move, like leg swings and high knees, rather than holding still. For a simple routine that fits the morning, see our guide to warming up before a 6am run.

During the run: pace, laps and splits

Pace is how fast you are running, usually measured in minutes per kilometre. Your easy pace is the speed where you could still hold a conversation, which is the pace most of a club run is done at. Cadence is how many steps you take each minute. Splits are your times for each kilometre, and a negative split is a run where the second half is faster than the first, something beginners do more often than they think because the first half was wisely gentle.

And lap is the word you will hear most from us: one loop of the course, 2.5 km on a Thursday morning or 3 km on a Tuesday night, with the option of a second. One lap is a complete run, not a warm up for a bigger one.

After the run: cool down and coffee

A cool down is the warm up in reverse: a few minutes of walking or very easy jogging at the end so your heart rate drifts down instead of stopping abruptly. In practice many people simply finish their last stretch gently and then walk about chatting, which does the same job. On Thursday mornings the cool down blends straight into the best part: coffee and a sweet treat afterwards.

The words you will hear at our runs

Every club has a few local words too. At ours you will hear one lap or two, because both the Thursday Morning Run and the Tuesday Night Run offer a short and a long option, and walkers are welcome at every one. You will hear pace groups, the loose clusters of similar speeds that set off together; our guide to how pace groups work explains them in detail.

And you will hear register, because every run is booked through a free HRC+ account. Have a look at the upcoming runs, make your free account, and the only unfamiliar words left will be everyone's coffee orders.