This started because nothing out there would let me be slow.

Molo means slow. Take it easy. Do it on purpose. I named the app after the one thing I refused to do for years, and refusing it cost me two of them.

In 2018 I could run for two hours without really noticing. Not training for anything, not tracking anything, just going out because I liked it. Then came studies, then work, then the ordinary weeks with no room in them. Nobody decides to stop running. It leaves quietly and you don't notice until you look up and it's been four years.

I tried to come back in 2022.

The same mistake, over and over

In my head I was still the person who ran for two hours. So I went out at that pace, because it was my pace. My body disagreed immediately and I ignored it. Twenty minutes in everything hurt, and I told myself it was just the first week back.

Then something would actually go, and I'd rest for three weeks, come back, and do it all again. That was my routine for two years. Not running. Getting injured, waiting, getting injured again.

The strange part is I knew exactly what was happening.

I couldn't make myself go slower, because going slow felt like admitting I'd lost something.

Then the apps

I used a few. They're not bad. Most start you off gently and build sensibly, and if life leaves you alone for nine straight weeks they probably work.

But I'd get injured and everything would fall apart. I'd rest, come back, and the app would be sitting exactly where I left it, ready to hand me the same session that hurt me. Nothing about it accounted for the fact that my body had changed since Tuesday. So I'd do the session, it would hurt again, and I'd stop again.

The rest was noise. Feeds full of other people's mornings, pace comparisons I never asked for, kilometres I hadn't run in years sitting on the screen like a receipt. None of it made me want to go outside. It made me feel behind before I'd even started.

I didn't want a community. I wanted to go for a run, come home, and be quietly proud of myself.

What actually worked

Intervals. Run for a bit, walk for a bit, run again. Knowing the break is coming is what gets me out of the door, and it's the only format that's never hurt me.

There's something else about them too. When you're running continuously and it gets hard, the only options are suffer or stop, and stopping feels like failing. With intervals the break is part of the plan. You're not giving up, you're doing the next bit. That difference sounds small and it changed everything for me.

But intervals alone weren't enough. I needed a plan that would move when my body said no, and still expect something from me on the days I was just being lazy. Adaptable and accountable at once. Everything I tried was one or the other.

So I built it

Molorun is intervals that listen. After each session it asks how it went. Too hard, something hurt, or fine. What you answer decides what comes next. Something hurt, you do that session again. Fine, you move forward.

Doing a session twice isn't falling behind. There's nothing to fall behind on. That was the whole problem in the first place, and removing it is most of what this app is.

Free to start, because the person who needs it most shouldn't have to pay to find out whether they'll stick with it.

Where I am now

It's a ritual, like brushing my teeth. I don't debate it anymore, I just go. Some days are still hard, and on the days I don't want to run I walk instead, and that counts as a session because it is one.

Mostly I go out to empty my head. Whatever I'm carrying gets left somewhere between the second and third interval, and I come back lighter than I went out. The running is fine. The hour afterwards is the part I actually love.

It took me four years to learn what molo means. This is so it doesn't take you four.

— Memouna

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