Three Ways to Improve your Speed

So you want to improve your speed, eh? While it’s important to keep speed in your training regimine, the tricky part is figuring out the what and when of speed training. I’m talking about speed in the broader context of a training plan, not necessarily pure speed, which involves very short intervals and full rest. Today, I’ll be talking about three aspects of training that are simple, easy to understand, and you can implement them at almost any time you want to spice things up: hill training, fartleks, and interval training.

Hill Training

As an athlete, I personally dread hill training because, well, hill training is tough! But, what they don’t tell you is that doing hill training is second to none for building your speed, leg strength, muscular endurance, stride efficiency, and grit. If you can grind on a hill, not many people are going to want to mess with you on the race course. The best part about using hill training is that it’s extremely versatile. I’ve programmed hills for the purposes of training pure speed at short, 6-8 second intervals, all the way up to 800 - mile rolling hill intervals for muscular endurance. Whatever way you slice it, hill training should be an essential part of your training. 

Fartleks

For those that think this is just a funny word (it is), but it also is Swedish for speed play. Essentially, it’s shorter bursts of running at a faster pace during a regular training run. I usually like to program fartleks by feel, but I like for them to feel somewhere between a 3k - 5k effort. An example of a fartlek session might take place during a 45 minute run, and during that you would perform 8x45 seconds at 3k -5k effort with 2-3 minutes in between bouts. You can make a fartlek training session as difficult, or as mild, as you’d like. If you’re out on your own training, your fartlek intervals could be running to that mailbox at the end of the block. The point is, you can make fartlek sessions as structured, or as unstructured, as you’d like

Interval Training

Ah, the bread and butter of a track season. Interval training is a key part to a middle to long distance runner’s training when they really want to work on their get down speed. You know, when you need that little bit of an extra gear at the end of a 5k when you want to beat that person in front of you? You’ll need some of that get down speed that interval training provides. Interval training is usually done (depending on the time of season, and target race) at somewhere just a bit faster than your race pace, with roughly equal rest. If you’re a 5 minute miler, then that means your 8x200 meter workout will probably be somewhere between 35-37 seconds per repetition. Just enough where it’s relatively fast while keeping the repetition short enough for you to maintain form.

The quick and dirty with these training types is that you don’t need to do them all in the same training week, or training cycle. In fact, I wouldn’t recommend doing all of these in one week, unless you’re a higher trained athlete. Experiment for a few weeks with hills, try some interval training for another few weeks, then try out some fartlek sessions. The point is, these are quick ways for you to throw in some quality speed sessions into your training routine, while making sure you are keeping things exciting and fresh. Give them a try and see just how speedy you can get!

Check out my training plan that incorporates fartleks and hill training on Final Surge.