What percentage of runners don't stop after their warm up?

Anyone can do this. Some top level runners do this. It is not just recreational runners.

Weird.

Progression runs are fun, though.

I'm not talking about progression runs.

I see people doing interval workouts, things like 5 x 1k at 5k pace with a 400m jog recovery, where they've just rolled straight in from their warm up jog.

Surely this isn't optimal.

Also, I've never heard of elites doing this - unless they're tacking on a few miles at marathon pace to the end of their long run. No elite is going to do a 5k paced workout without stopping to at least do strides.

You are WRONG. Some elites jog right into their 12 x 400m, for example, and maybe the first one is a little slower because of that. Trust me I know.

Maybe you should teach them the way

It is clear the OP is not an elite runner. For elite runners, a few minutes of jogging and then running 4:30 pace, for example, would be fairly routine.

61%

I'm guessing you're just trying to justify your own tendency to do this, but no, it would not be routine.

Most (I would say just about all) elites would jog for at least 20 minutes, STOP, then do some drills, do a few strides, change their shoes, then do a few more strides, and then after a few more minutes, they'd start their workout.

Jogging straight into your workout (for the reasons mentioned above) is not going to allow you to get the most out of that workout. Therefore, you would only do it for one of the following reasons:

* Ignorance

* Compulsion (the mentality that if you stop during a run, you've somehow failed)

* You're time poor and you have to sacrifice quality for convenience

Some us have talent and we also are not anal retentive jerks. We excel partly because we are not worried about rules that make no sense to the intelligent. The cream will rise to the top without your silly insistence on your methods.

Probably mostly this. If you have 20 or 30 minutes to get in the best workout you can, the strides and drills are probably the thing you're going to sacrifice. Otherwise you'd have to knock reps off of your actual workout. Feeling a little rough on your first rep is better than turning your 5X1K into a 3X1K because you ran out of time to finish your workout after stopping to change your shoes and do a bunch of drills.

I usually have an hour to get in my run and doing some build ups and drills in the last half mile of my warmup gets me mostly ready plus not stopping gives me time for an extra mile. Not quite as fast in the moment of the workout but the effort is there.

Do you really want me spamming your Strava feed with separate warm up, strides, workout, and cool down activities sometimes twice a day? That's why I skip stopping. I do it for you and all of the other needy children out there following.

I do this, but not just to avoid a sluggish first rep. I only race a few times a year, so I like to have my workout preparation resemble my race preparation so it doesn't feel unusual in a race when I have gaps between my shakeout, strides, and race start. I jog for 15 minutes on a park's dirt path (which is also slightly easier on my injury-prone legs than the track), drive 10 minutes to the track, do my strides, and wait about 10 minutes before starting the workout. Works for me, as my first rep is usually only a little slower than the others.

I agree. My quick lunchtime workout is 1 mile warmup, 3 mile progressive, 1 mile cooldown. I can do the entire thing in a bit over 30 minutes and I consider it not much worse than my Saturday workout that takes 90 minutes with my bathroom break and drills and shoe changes.

Your central nervous system sounds weak and frail.

How do you know they roll right in to their workout? I'll pause my watch after warm up, but I'm not going to upload several activities for one session. Drills and strides I'm not going to time.

Ever heard of The Michigan, OP?

Generally if I am doing a threshold type workout I may take a pee break but then go right into it. If i'm doing faster stuff the drills and strides always get done.

As they used to say. Sounds like a personal problem. (on your part). How do you know they don't stop? For progressions and some tempo runs I don't stop. But for anything faster I will, but usually just turn off my watch during dynamic stretching and any break, for a drink, bathroom, or shoe change but other than the elapsed time being longer than the workout time you wouldn't know.