The area race season is starting up and nearby races for runners are becoming more frequent. Whether an entrant walks, jogs, or runs the one thing that most participants want is “What was my time?” Much of how fast, or slow, a runner records for a time often depends on how difficult the course was, the temperature on the race day and how well the runner felt that morning. Many runners mention that they entered the race “for fun and exercise,” but if they can be a few seconds or more faster than their previous best time it becomes an encouragement to try to be a little faster at the next race. There is a saying in running circles that states, “If you train or run slow your race time will be slow.” In order to run faster the runner must train faster.
Running a constant speed on all of your runs will give you a little advantage as you get in better condition but improvement will be minimal. If you want a faster time the runner needs to add a fast training day to their program. As little as one day of speed work will be a benefit but two training sessions a week is better. Speed work takes on many forms of training. From running faster for one minute and walking or jogging for three minutes on a run will help. Fartlek training is a fun way to run faster. I used four levels of pace in my fartlek runs. One was a slow jog, another one was a normal running pace, a third was a race pace, and the fourth one was a fast sprint type. How far, and in what order the levels were, was varied and in no particular order. The key was that the run had some faster running speeds mixed in the training.
