How To Increase Your Running Speed
Interval Track Session
We are in the middle of race season and if you are looking to build your speed, doing consistent track sessions will give you an extra edge come race day.
British Olympic gold medallist Sebastian Coe once said,
“I’ve always felt that long, slow distance produces long, slow runners.”
To improve your run performance, you need a balance of easy days and hard, faster intervals.
Here’s a session for you to try down the track.
For this session:
Ideally on a Track otherwise find a flat quiet area about up to 1km in length.
Please note: If you have any injuries do not do these sessions until you have fully recover
Warm Up
- All sessions start with 2–4 laps warm up or 5 minutes easy run
Dynamic stretching: Do a selection of the below based on what you fancy but try to make sure all parts of the body are covered
- Heeling / toeing
- Hamstring kicks or hamstring leg swings
- Walking glute stretch, knee up and then foot across
- Side to side leg swings
- Stepping over the gate
- Grapevine
- Walking lunges + walking lunges with twist
- Sweeping the floor with arms
- Hip circles
- Upper body circles
- Ankle pumps, straight, Charlie Chaplin, pigeon.
- Side to side skips with arms.
- Skipping on the spot or in a cross.
Run form / strength.
- Do a couple of fast feet and a couple of strength e.g. skipping & bounding for strength and high knees and heel pumps for speed.
- 2 or 3 x Strides — accelerate for 10 steps, hold it and then slow. Max 85% effort.
Main set
300m on, 300m jog recovery x 7
Pace: hard, but one that can be held for all efforts. e.g. 1 mile pace (or a pace at which you are able to gasp 1 to 2 words)
Optional Extra
Depending on time & how you are feeling you can finish off with a couple of 200m or 100m to finish. Or if you fancy some T1 training, shoes off put on 50m line, run 50m, shoes on finish.
Cool Down
Stretches to finish, either pick your own favourites or follow ours…
If you suffer from any injuries, avoid doing stretches that may aggravate them, e.g. lower calf stretch with Achilles problem.
Hold for 15 to 30 seconds.
- Calf — step one leg back legs & feet parallel, hip width apart.
- Lower calf — step back foot forward and sink down pushing back knee forward, aim to increase angle of ankle flex and move stretch to lower calf / Achilles. This one often needs a bit of trial and error to get so check people are feeling it and get them to adjust.
- Reach arms up to the sky, looking up and pulling the whole body up. Move to lean back stretching abs and flexing lower back. Go back to upright and then stretch to each side. Bend forward from the waist and relax with arms dangling to toes and nose pointing at knees. Unwind slowly.
- Quad stretch — grip round ankle, knees together, core engaged and stand tall. Increase the stretch by tipping the bottom of the pelvis forward.
- Inner-thigh / Adductor stretch — legs apart, move weight to one side bending knee and support weight on knee. Extend by moving hands to the floor.
- Hip-flexor — kneel on one leg with other leg bent in front, on supporting leg side — include either arm in air or an arm stretch. Push forward to increase the stretch.
- Hamstring — from above position stretch front leg out straight in front and lean over it.
- Glutes — either leg bent in front on floor, lying on back pulling a leg back or one of the standing options.
- Additional calf stretches on the steps either straight leg heel drop or bent leg heel drop.
