The Secret to Faster Running
Would you believe me if I said that by running slower, you can run faster?
So often, runners think that if we want to run faster we have to push the limit, run that red line feeling, run towards our ventilatory threshold on every.single.run. The problem is that this is what MOST runners do. And most runners aren’t reaching their full potential. Most runners are running 50% at medium intensity and 50% easy intensity and are still not hitting the PRs they want to hit and feeling burnout with their training.
If this is you – I have good news. There is an easier and better way to get you running faster and stronger than ever before.
And it’s this: 80% of your total mileage should be EASY and 20% of your total mileage should be medium/hard intensity.
Why? Think of it this way…
If we are pushing our bodies all the time and not allowing for proper rest and recovery, our muscles are not going to get the change to actually get stronger. When you workout, you are breaking down your muscles. They aren’t getting stronger, they are getting weaker. That’s why at the end of a hard run your are super fatigued. Recovery days are all about allowing your muscles to get stronger, rebuild, and restore. But if you aren’t allowing your body these recovery periods, you are training in a state of constant fatigue > which will invenitably lead to burnout, injury, or simply under-performance.
But, if we do allow our bodies the days to recovery properly, we will be able to preform better, recover faster, train with higher mileage and harder (smaller amounts) intensity – thus leading to greater fitness gains.
This isn’t just something I made up, but something I’m learning from the experts and elites in the running field. Matt Fitzgerald just published a book called, 80/20 Running, which I highly recommend as an excellent resource on this topic.
The though is this: if we can train at higher volume (i.e. Higher mileage) and be able to do that without injury, fatigue, and burnout (i.e. Slow running) AND still incorporate speed into our training cycles, what would we be able to do?
And we’ve seen great things happen recently in America’s elite running. And they all follow this 80/20 approach to running > easy days EASY, hard days HARD.
The thing that excites me is what would happen if WE, the everyday runners did this too. What would happen if we trained like an elite? Where would we go? And what would we achieve?
A simple way to figure out YOUR specific paces is through the Jack Daniels’s Running Calculator < use this link! Your easy pace my freak you out, but I promise if you run easy 80% of the time, you WILL get faster!
So, here’s to running slow, so we can run fast!
Question of the Day?
- How often do you run, “easy?”