So you want to run faster? You want to be able to finish your race quicker? You don’t want to be the last person to cross the line? You don’t want to think you will be holding up your friends? Here is a very simple and effective way for the vast majority of people to improve their running speed…
Spend more time running faster.
There you go, that’s it. Simple as that. You can pay me now please.
Oh, you want more than that, huh? (How come people don’t ask for more detail when some PR company make up some pseudo-science crap about…well, anything?)
OK, here are some more details. Hopefully we all know that we improve and get better at things we practice and experience. For example:
- We improve our driving skills by actually getting behind a wheel and driving.
- We get better at our job by actually doing the job day to day.
- We learn how to use our smartphones by actually tinkering about and using them.
We do not get better at something by practicing something else. For example:
- We don’t improve your driving skills by…baking a cake.
- We don’t get better at our job by pulling a sickie and watching daytime tv.
- We don’t learn how to use our smartphones by making a patchwork quilt.
The same goes for running speed. To improve our speed, we need to spend time actually running faster. Not longer, but faster. Because there is a difference. A while ago I explained about the Intensity/Duration Curve. This explains that higher intensities must be of shorter durations than lower intensities. Click here to read what I wrote. This means we will have a slower average running speed in 1x10km run compared to 10x1km runs.
So if you swap your 1x10km run at a steady pace for 10x1km runs at a fast pace, you will have gained a load of experience at running faster, instead of a load of experience at running slower.
Go on. Why don’t you just give it a go. Just for a month. Don’t argue, don’t backchat. Just try it out for a month and see where it takes you.