Another big hitter on the Beginner Running Survey was the question, “How do I go faster and longer?”
Let me take a swing at this.
First of all, if you are a beginner, please give your body time to get used to the act of running. Ramping up your mileage and intensity in the first year will most probably result in an injury that will put you on the sidelines. Really, most coaches say that it takes up to 2 years to build a good base from which to do advanced training if you are a beginner.
If you think you are ready to get more serious and you have a good base of running 3-4 times a week for 3-4 months then the only way to get faster and go longer is to run faster and longer. Sounds obvious right? But, how do you get started?
A good place to start would be to get your body ready for more load and more intensity by doing some strength and flexibility exercises for a couple months. Work 2-3 days of total body workout with light weights into your week.
Focus on stretching and flexibility for the important running systems, like your hamstrings, your achiles, your ITB, your quads. Go online, or ask a coach for some flexibility routines and dedicate some time to it. Hold those hamstring stretches for 5 minutes. See if you can get to the point where you can touch your toes or touch your head to your knee. You can either do it now, or after you’re injured, your choice!
When you’re ready start bringing your miles up by working in a long run every other weekend. For me this might be a 20 miler. For you this could be a 5 miler. Just keep extending it by a mile or so every other week.
There is a huge gain in performance when you increase your weekly mileage from 15 to 25, another big gain when you bring it up to 40 or 50 and professionals will go into the 70 miles per week range. I usually try to train in the 30 – 50 miles per week zone.
When you are comfortable with the miles you can load on intensity. This can take many different forms. Intervals, fartleks, hill charges, tempo runs, track workouts and progression runs. The key is to bring your pace up into the ‘working hard’ zone. The serious among us may do this 2 or 3 times a week. I would recommend to get started you do some sort of tempo workout once a week for a few months.
One easy and safe way to ease into tempo work is to finish the last mile or so of your normal run with a hard effort. Bring it in hard. This is good because your body is warmed up and it will make you feel great. If you just do this one thing 2 or 3 times a week – you’ll feel the difference.
This was not intended as a detailed instruction, just an overview of approaches to getting faster and going longer. Please consider getting a coach to help you do this, and please remember that there are rest days and rest weeks worked into these schedules. Not even idiots like me run hard every day.
Hope that helps.