The weather is warming up and there are more races for runners to enter. It is time to shake off the cold weather missed days of running and start to concentrate on getting the times down to what you set last summer or fall. There are a number of race entrants that do a slow jog or even walk a 5K distance. They mention that they are just in the race for exercise, or to support the sponsoring organizations charity, but whether they run for fun or not every runner or walker likes to know their time. Invariably everybody seems to like setting a PR in a race whether they run or walk. Walkers will pick up the pace, or even do a jog, to set a faster time.
There are two ways to run faster. The first is if you want to run fast, you have to train with faster practice runs. There are many forms of speed training for runners besides having a coach timing how fast you can run around a track. Running intervals around a track of varying distances is one of the best training practices to increase your running speed. For the average runner the difference between their average pace in a race and the pace around the track only has to be a few seconds. If you are running a 9 minute average pace (2:15 minutes per lap) in a race the pace around a track should be no faster than an 8:40 pace (2:10 minutes per lap). When that pace becomes comfortable another drop in lap time is necessary.
When you think that a 5 second faster time running a lap is over a minute faster time in a 5K race those small increases result in larger gains. By the end of the summer you are probably running over several minutes faster or more from the start of the season.
