Improving your running speed can pose a challenge for your athletic career. It is common for athletes to struggle with this. In this article, we will be sharing a few tips to help you overcome this challenge and increase your running speed successfully.
Increase Run Volume
When it comes to running, a lot of people have a very little range which means that there is a very small difference between their steady run pace and top-end speed.
The idea behind increasing increasing your run volume is to not only improve your aerobic health but also to increase your running efficiency which of course will make you faster than normal.
There are three basic tricks to successfully increase your run volume which are the following:
- Over load your body at first.
- Let your body recover and adapt to the new stimulus.
These steps play key role in increasing your run volume so you should mainly focus on them while trying to run faster.
By following these two simple rules, you’ll slowly notice that your run mileage has increased surprisingly.
However, do note that one thing that you should avoid is overstressing your body beyond a certain limit in a given period of time. Therefore, we recommend you to follow the 10% rule – never increase your run volume more than 10% in a single week.
This rule will not only prevent you from overtraining but will also reduce the risk of any kind of potential injury resulting from the overburdening.
Include Speed Sessions in your Weekly Training
Increasing your speed shouldn’t be over-complicated or considered a rocket science. If you want to increase your speed you just have to include speed workout activities or speed sessions. Here are a few different type of speed sessions which you should include in your weekly training:
1) Interval Session
When you think about doing an interval session, don’t consider it very intimidating or difficult. As soon as it starts to bother or make you feel exhausted, it’s already over.
You can start with 8-10 lots of 30 seconds hard with 3-5k pace which is then followed by 30 seconds easy. This can be extended to 8-10 lots of 45 seconds hard followed by 45 seconds easy. After that, you can go up to 5-6 lots of 60-75 seconds hard followed by 60 seconds easy.
An alternative session template can be used as well. You can do 5 lots of 3 minutes at 5k pace, followed by 2 minutes of an easy jog. You can also do 3 lots of 5-6 minutes at 10k pace followed by 3 minute easy jog.
2) Tempo Pace
A tempo pace is also known as the threshold pace. It the pace at which you can run a track lasting almost an hour.
What we’re gonna do here is that we’re gonna extend our lactate threshold. A lactate threshold is reached when our body starts producing lactic acid in the muscles to provide them with additional energy required for exercise and this could make you feel pretty uncomfortable.
Lactic acid accumulation causes cramps after strenuous exercise. So, if we could push our lactate threshold higher, it can make our exercise sessions much more efficient and easier to carry out.
If you can push up your body’s lactate threshold, it would not only make your body more fit for the exercise but also increase your body’s tolerance of discomfort.
Before you start, we’d like to suggest 4 lots of 5 minutes at tempo pace with two minutes jog recovery between each.
After this, you can progress to 2 lots of 10 minutes also with 2 minutes of jog recovery between each of them.
Try to get yourself at 15,20 or 25 minutes continuous at a tempo pace. Another important point to note here is hill repeats. You should consider doing tempo runs with hill repeats. These add strength to your running and are a very vital step of the exercise.
If you have a short and sharp incline use hill repeats for intense intervals. They are similar to the interval sessions which we have discussed above. However, if you’re climbing up a longer incline of a lesser gradient, you should push the intensity back and increase the length of your efforts.
3) Speed Intervals
Long runs are usually considered as spending some time on feet or running some miles. However, what we want to suggest here is to involve speed intervals in long runs. Speed intervals in long runs teach us how to deal with the fatigue and shortness of breath.
Interval runnings help improve your aerobic health and utilization of oxygen even if you run a short distance. This ultimately decreases the risks of cardiovascular diseases and respiratory disorders.
4) Weight Loss
Last but not the least, weight loss is an important factor if you’re improving your mileage. People think of this as a taboo topic and try to avoid it but we cannot ignore the fact that weight loss is essential in increasing running speed.
When we talk about fat, we’re not talking about lean muscle mass. That’s actually very beneficial for long mileage, and we’d recommend you to engage in activities that increase that muscle bulk.
You can easily lose weight by following the above mentioned tips and by sticking to a healthy and balanced diet. This will prove to be very helpful in removing the unnecessary weight of fat on the body which can potentially slow you down.