Note: I am a newly certified RRCA Running Coach. Everything posted in "Coach's Corner" is my opinion. I am not a doctor or a dietician. As with anything on the internet, take everything with a grain of salt!
Question of the week: How can I get faster?
Answer: The magic question that we all want the answer to, right? I bet every coach has a different answer. And I'll admit minimal experience in this category.
However, in my opinion, nothing makes you faster than endurance. If you are consistently running 3 miles a day and racing 5ks, if you up one of your runs to 4, then 5, then maybe even 6 miles, you will likely become speedier when racing only 3. For longer distances, this might just be increasing the number of miles per week, but only IF your body can handle it without injury. Almost all of my gained speed has come via endurance and flat out getting the miles in (yes, I'm not super speedy, but in the course of 15 months, I've gone from 11:50 min/mile to 9:52 min/mile for a half marathon). Let me add in, though, that you will see the greatest speed improvements in your first 18 months and then the improvements will slow.
Other ways to get faster is speedwork. There are lots of different methods of speedwork, but for beginners, I would say the three easiest to add to your routine (only once a week) would be hills, pace runs, or fartleks. Hills is exactly what it sounds like... run up a hill, walk or jog down the hill, and repeat. Pace runs are runs done at the goal pace for the goal event. In other words, if you want to run a half marathon at 10 min/mile, you might do a mid-week run with a 1 mile slow warm-up, 4 miles at 10 min/mile, and then a 1 mile slow cooldown. This is just a random example, and may or may not apply to you. Fartleks are a favorite for beginners. They are unstructured interval workouts. You do a nice easy warm-up, then intervals with recovery. These intervals may be "sprint to the next mailbox" or "run hard until I get to the end of the block", etc. In between these, you do a slow recovery jog, then go again. As always, your mileage and the number of repeats will vary. There are of course other ways to do speedwork and, I'm sure, many varying opinions on the matter.
For beginners, though, I think the focus should be on building the mileage... if you have extra weeks to add in some race-specific speedwork, then that's just a bonus!
Tip of the week: On the opposite end from the question of the week... if you are having trouble increasing the length of your long run, slow down! Many of us have some pre-conceived notion of how fast we should be going in order to be considered "running". Whether you are running 14 min/mile or 6 min/mile, you are running. Don't be afraid of pulling back and slowing down to get in that extra distance. And you might be surprised... once you know you can do it, mentally, you'll be prepared to go that distance more and more often and you'll naturally be able to start upping your pace. So slow down and break through that mental barrier!!!
Motivational Quote of the Week:
“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
T.S. Eliot
Note: I am a newly certified RRCA Running Coach. Everything posted in "Coach's Corner" is my opinion. I am not a doctor or a dietician. As with anything on the internet, take everything with a grain of salt!
(Runners and coaches, please feel free to offer more input and/or feedback on these Coach's Corner posts.)
9 comments:
Thanks coach.
I couldn't agree more with scaling back for long run days - it's really made a huge difference for me.
Thanks for all the good info. I needed to read it again. Sometimes we know what to do but we forget it when we are not using it.
What I noticed about myself is that once I got in the long runs, I looked forward to the longest run of the week more than just the shorter 3 or 5 mile runs during the week.
I think after this next half marathon - or maybe the next two since they are less than a month apart - I'll start working on the things you suggested here. It is time to graduate and do more than just get in the miles. I think I'm ready to grow up! Finally!
You are so right about how improvements really start to slow after about a year and a half to two years. Sad face.
really interesting that endurance will make you faster in the end...at least for shorter races. i remember at a race in the fall a friend telling me the same thing as we walked to the starting line. and it gives me hope for races in the future given that i'm pretty much only doing endurance stuff.
speedwork still has a hold on my heart though!
Thanks for the good advice, Lesley. Sometimes I just get frustrated when I can't run at the speeds of so many others. But now that I've been logging the miles you've suggested, I'm feeling much better about myself. The way I see it - I have LOTS of room for improvement and will make a great success story someday :)
about how many hill repeats would you tell a beginner to start out with? and how fast/often would you tell them to progress? I love your coach's corner posts! I'm helping a friend train for a half and you are making me more knowledgable! :) Thanks for all your advice!
Zaneta - That is really hard to answer because all hills are different lengths or steepness. Frankly, for a beginner, I would probably try to find a hilly route and ask them to try to keep a steady effort level through the whole thing. I have a hill in my neighborhood that is a bear... takes about 2-3 minutes to get up it... if I had someone here with that hill, I'd probably start with 3 repeats progressing to as many as 10... with a warm-up run before and cool-down run after. A basic hill-repeat would be best on a hill that takes 60-90 seconds to climb. But for me, it really just depends on what is convenient for the runner... the more convenient the hill, the more likely they are to do the workout. I'd start with just 3 mid-run hills though... adding no more than 1 a week, but not adding, necessarily, to the overall distance of the run. It really depends on what he/she is training for (distance and terrain), as well. Sorry, wishy-washy answer.
no!! it's a good answer! Thank you :)
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