Getting Faster

Most runners like the idea of increasing their speed, but find it hard to do so. I've often gone out for a 'fast 10km' and I feel like I've gone out hard, maintained that pace, kept it up on the way back, arrive at the end sweating, redfaced and BND only to find I ran the same time..or God forbid slower than my usual plod.

There is a trick to learn in running faster.... run fast over shorter periods.

If you try to increase your speed over the 10km or more you will probably find you only take seconds off and seem to be exhausting yourself.

Make one of your weekly runs approx 30mins duration, I know that's hard, I often say I wouldn't even bother putting on the shoes if I wasn't going out for 10km, but to increase speed you have more of a chance on working at it over 5km than pushing 10. Find a good flat 5km course near your house and work hard at pushing your speed, do this once a week and each week try to take some time off it, even if it's seconds it is still an improvement.

If you are like me you will find this really hard, I often say I'd rather run a slow 10 than a fast 5, but this will help you to improve your times if you are entering a race, as well as being a high fat burning workout.

Or the other option is to make one of your 10km runs a fartlek or tempo session.

Fartlek- run normally for 10mins then pick a landmark up the road and run hard to it, once there run normally to the next landmark and repeat this until you have 10mins to run and then recovery pace to the end of your run

Tempo- run normal pace for 10mins and then pick up your pace for 20mins, not sprinting but running about %10-20 faster, once again recovery pace for the last 10 to 15minutes.

You have more of a chance of increasing speed by these methods than slogging it out for the whole 10km, and then still being disappointed with your efforts.

A lot of the work we do on the Muck Up sessions is designed to add some speed to your running, so make sure you use those sessions correctly, push hard when you have to, recovery pace when you are told to.

Maybe you are not interested in running faster, but it can be a good thing to improve on your times especially if in a competition, it's a good incentive and motivational to try to improve on your last official time.

It is only a competition between yourself and your last time, not to win the race!! For instance if you ran just over an hour on your last 10km you may want to run just under an hour next time in that event, but you need to know you have to put some effort into your training to achieve the faster time.