One of the ways many people have got into running is through the Couch25K programme. Having successfully followed it, they now consider themselves a runner. And rightly so. But it’s the next step where the problem begins.
More often than not, many of today’s runners have busy lives. Running only gets a small look-in and when it does they want to make it a significant run. They prioritise the distance of runs over how often they run. So more often than not, they find themselves running at a pace that feels okay but it’s almost always for five, six, seven, eight miles. On Sundays they might go out and run ten miles or if they’ve decided to run a marathon go even further.
This all promotes an illusion of fitness. But being able to run for a long time is not necessarily indicative of great fitness. Trudging around as many runners do at 10-12 minutes per miles can be tiring for them which reinforces the illusion of fitness.
But if you watch those runners for the next few years you will find they are still jogging around at the same sort of times and paces.
The biggest mistake in modern running is the idea that just going further will help you get faster.
Now this is a dramatic statement and I need to apply a caveat or two here. While you may race faster, endurance never creates speed.
What I mean by this is that if you can run 5K in 25 minutes then a well trained runner could expect to run a marathon in around four hours. If you are running your marathon in five hours then working on your endurance will definitely help you run a faster marathon.
But once you achieve that, if all you do is go out for distance runs then you’re not going to get significantly faster at any of your race distances. You might do another marathon and record 3hr56 or run 24:50 at parkrun but you’re not going to see any significant progress through just distance running.
At some point you need to do some kind of training that actually builds speed.
Here are some suggestions for getting started:
- Add pickups to your runs once or twice each week. Simply pick the pace up for 10 seconds before returning to your original speed. Some runners like to finish with a fast stretch home.
- Try a fartlek run. A variation on pick-ups is to do a variety of paces for different durations throughout the entire run. This is particularly good for groups of runners where different runners can lead the pace determining how long it will last before dropping back to an easy pace before someone else takes the lead. The variations can range for ten seconds going very fast to a few minutes getting out of breath.
- After an easy run do a set of five strides. Run 95% top speed for just ten seconds then walk back to recover. It’s five minutes extra but will get your legs moving quicker.
- Run to a local hill and run up it for thirty seconds then jog back down. When you’ve done four efforts run home for warmdown.
When you’ve tried these, if you would like a more formalised speed programme then you can Contact me to buy my 3-month plan that will get you fitter and faster. It’s great value and you’ll receive weekly coaching while you’re following it.
Big Red Running 