Speed Workouts to Run Faster
Your diet of exercise should include a healthy portion of speed workouts. If you don’t know how to fill your plate, here are several staples of speed work runs to get faster:
- Fartleks. These workouts are runs that alternate between hard and easy paces. Meaning “speed play” in Swedish, fartleks will help you build speed, develop a resistance to fatigue and teach you how to pace yourself.
- Strides. Strides train your mind and body to pick up the pace by hitting the gas in short bursts. Increase your speed during a normal run for 20 to 30 seconds, and then back off to your normal pace for about a minute and a half. Then crank it up again. These will teach you how it feels to fly.
- Progression runs. The magic of progression runs lies in a faster pace to finish than to start. Bump up the speed throughout your run to build fatigue resistance that carries into race day.
- Track repeats. A track is flat, and it comes pre-measured so your distances are consistent. Track workouts can be altered to fit any training plan, too, so you can find one that sets you up to torch your race.
- Long runs. While not exactly a speed workout, some distance runners have found that marathon training improved their short race speed.
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