Running--increasing my speed

I'm currently a junior in college, and used to do varsity cross country and track in high school. For the past ~3 years or so, I've been stuck at running about ~4.5 - 4.6 miles in 30 minutes. Given my schedule and other things I do working out, I don't like to run less or more than 30 minutes in any given workout. I've been eating healthy, doing all the right stretches and averaging 7-8 hours of sleep a night (~10-11 on weekends, ~6-7 on weekdays). What can I do to get to maybe ~4.75 miles in 30 minutes by Christmas/New Years.

 

There are a lot of variables, so it's tough to answer strictly from what you've shared. That said, track work. 100s, 200s, 400s, etc, you could do a great workout in 30 min. (I assume you've got experience with this from HS). Track work always kicks my butt and is most effective in breaking through plateaus for me.

 

^^^ What Scott said. Sprints help build endurance/speed. If you're just running for distance all the time, you're not building up power in your muscles.

Source: http://running.competitor.com/2012/06/training/speed-development-for-di… Also, dad ran barely over 4' 1600m. His advice agrees with the above article.

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Best Response

^^ what D M said...High Intensity Interval training is arguably the single most effective technique when your training goals are a mix of speed and endurance.

Even if you were to tweak your regimen to, say, a 60% endurance/distance and 40% speed/conditioning plan you would likely see huge results.

If you broke the 40% portion down into 1 day a week of short high intensity sprints (less than 40 yards) and short agility drills, even jump roping or ladder drills mixed with core stability you are training your body outside of the normal scope of a X-country runner and that is what you need. The other speed day, IMO, should consist of strictly track sprints: sprint the straight legs of the track and jog the turns. When you first start off you can walk the turns because you may not be accustomed to sprint training.

You can also do these HIIT sprints on a bike, stationary bike, elliptical or one of those womanly machines haha they are actually a very good supplement and alternative when you are putting in mileage in excess of 10 per week so as to reduce the load you are placing on knees, shins, low-back, etc.

At the end of the day training for pure speed is simple: you have to have 100% explosion and energy on all reps, and 100% recovery in between repetitions. In your case, you are more of an endurance athlete and need to tweak that formula as much as possible to reach your goals --> try the 60/40 breakdown I mentioned.

PM me if you have any questions - I used to be an exercise science major for 2 years - I love this shit.

 

for HIIT ive read you should go 30 seconds on, 30 off...which means youre probably running way more than 40 yards in that time - you'd disagree on the distance?

also, 100% recovery? I've never read that in a HIIT article...it's gonna take more than 20-30 seconds for 100% recovery after a 100%-effort-sprint....plus, you'll never decrease your recovery time if you dont push yourself to start again before you're 100% recovered, right? and isnt that the goal of sprint training?

not to challenge you, it's just that I've never come across those 2 suggestions before...

 

I also love running and love to involve myself some light exercises beside running. I would like to suggest you but it all depends how do you take it and more importantly how do you implement it.

I saw there are lots of people especially young people like us love to listening music while running. I also listen music while running. Believe me, it helps to increase my stamina.

 

Agree with the interval training advice. I would also throw in some weight training targeting your legs. I know some people that say long distance runners don't want to lift at all, but I found that many of the runners I knew college on the school team saw their times improve as they strengthened their legs a bit. They weren't ever trying to squat a ton of weight, they focused more on high reps at light weights. I work some a leg exercises in have been able to hit the targets that you set out in your post after starting as a pretty slow kid.

 

you're aiming to be running at 6:19/mile...so you need to "teach" your body to run at that pace. do workouts like 5x1k at 3:40 w/2min rest inbetween each interval. another good interval workout would be 6x800s in 2:50 w/1:45 rest. end each workout with strides (going 70-80% of max for 80m). on days where you don't do workouts you'll want to continue to do some long runs at a slower pace (7:40-8min/mile), going for 60-65 minutes. if your body can't handle the mileage do the long runs in the pool (pool running) or on the elliptical or bike. and do a tempo run once a week, maybe going 6:42/mile for 3.1 miles.

 

I ran what would be considered decent but by no means excellent times for D1 Track in the 800-5k. I’m not an expert but think I understand the training and physiology pretty well. If you want to run faster over a 30 minute time period the single biggest thing is lowering your lactate threshold, followed by improving VO2 max. This has nothing to do with HIIT, crossfit, kettleball swings, etc etc.

Figure out the pace you could hold for an all out effort for an hour. Run 20-30 minutes at this pace once a week. You can break it up into 10 minute segments with a one minute jog if you want.

For VO2 work, do a total of 4k-6k of intervals at 5k pace with a little less than 1:1 rest segments. If you can run a 5k at 6:00 pace, do 5x1000 meters with a 3 minute break between reps. Other variants could be 4x1200, 6x800, etc. Don’t make the reps any longer than a mile though.

Try to run longer once a week , work your way up to an hour. Gradually work down on the paces for the workouts. Do 4-5 100m strides (relaxed sprints) after your easy runs. You'll get faster for sure.

 

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"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee

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