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Need Running Tips to Get Faster?

Here's Six Ideas on How to Run Faster in Your Next Race

To run faster in your next race, work on six areas: build your weekly mileage with mostly easy running, vary your pace with interval training (short hard efforts with easy recovery), add tempo running at a comfortably hard pace, include hill training, look after your sleep, food and stress, and add strength training. Below: each of the six in turn, with how to start each one without getting injured.

You've already got some races under your belt and you've been running for a while, and now you want to go faster. Your next race should be your best one yet, and each of these six changes is a way to get there.

Running Tips to Get Faster #1: More Mileage

If you are anything like the regular runner, you probably run 3–4 times per week. Your total mileage sits somewhere between 15 and 30 miles. Maybe a little higher, maybe a little lower. I'd say 90% of the running population is in this group.

There is serious improvement to be found by increasing your mileage. Build up a strong, strong base — that's where it starts.

Lots of easy running, combined with consistency and getting your runs in every week, will do wonders over months and years of training. It really will.

You do need to take care when building up your mileage — as you increase your workload, your injury risk rises with it. I'd recommend checking out the Increasing Mileage Safely page for high-level guidelines that will help keep you healthy.

Increasing your mileage endlessly isn't a strategy that works — at some point you'll either get injured or run out of time. When you're trying to combine family, work, and 70+ miles per week, something gives. For many of us, the sensible mileage level — the point at which you can keep everything balanced and stay injury-free — sits lower than that. Still higher than 20–30 miles per week, though. So if you want to get faster, start here: look at your mileage and how consistent you are.

Running Tips to Get Faster #2: Vary Your Pace

Once you've built up decent mileage — mostly through easy runs — start varying your pace and introduce interval training.

A mistake many of us make is running without much variety in our programme. We keep doing the same thing over and over again. Same pace, same route, same effort. And then we expect different results.

Keep running at the same speed in training and your body adapts — and stops improving. You need to push it out of its comfort zone.

Running at different speeds trains different body systems. Interval training, specifically, gets your body better at pumping oxygen to your muscles more efficiently. When oxygen delivery improves, you can sustain a faster pace without breaking down.

When you start interval running, start easy — 30 seconds hard, 2 minutes easy, alternating. Over time, build up the hard interval to around 3–5 minutes.

Follow the link for more information about interval running.

Running Tips to Get Faster #3: Tempo Pace

Alongside interval training, I'd recommend training at tempo pace. Tempo training means running at a speed slightly faster than easy pace — best described as comfortably hard. It's a pace you can hold for longer periods, but it takes real effort.

What tempo running does is raise your lactate acid threshold — the point at which lactic acid builds up in your muscles faster than your body can clear it. Run above that threshold and lactic acid keeps accumulating, so your legs go heavy — and the further above it you run, the sooner that happens.

Run just below it, though, and you train your body to clear lactic acid more efficiently. Over time, your threshold rises — and you can run faster before your legs start to protest.

Running Tips to Get Faster #4: Hill Training

Hill training is one of the best ways to weave strength training into your running — and it's underused. Every time you climb a hill, you're building leg strength. Even downhill running, particularly on steeper descents, tests your legs in ways that flat running simply doesn't.

You can do hill training in different ways — including hills in your easy runs or long runs, or doing specific hill intervals or hill sprints. The trick is to build up sensibly. Hills are an assault on your legs. Start with just 2–4 intervals, then build from there.

I incorporate hills into my usual Sunday morning run with the trail runners group I run with. I'm not a good hill runner — it hurts, most days. But the gains are undeniable. A couple of years ago I spent several months doing almost exclusively easy running in the hills. Every run was at a very low speed. I then entered a local race for fun and blew myself away with the strength, speed, and endurance I had built up doing all that hill running.

Running Tips to Get Faster #5: Holistic View

So far, I've focused on running-specific elements. There's more I could have covered — strides, fartleks, more complex combination workouts, goal pace running, and so on. All of it can help you become a faster runner. But now I want to shift attention to things that aren't directly about running.

Think about your lifestyle. What could you change to get a little healthier?

For example.....

Are you getting 7–8 hours of sleep?

Are you eating healthily?

Could you lose some weight?

How about your alcohol intake?

How about other stressors in your life?

It's worth taking a few minutes now and again to take stock — and identify one or two changes that would leave you a little healthier or a little more rested. It makes a difference to how fast you run. More than most people expect.

Running Tips to Get Faster #6: Strength Training

Are you doing strength training?

If not, you're missing out. For a full breakdown of exercises and progressions, the guide to strength training for runners is well worth your time.

I'm a runner. I came to strength training with gritted teeth — I'd have happily kept ignoring it. But at some point I had to face the fact that there were imbalances in my legs I couldn't fix with running alone. Every time I pushed my mileage beyond 40 miles, I'd get pain in my left leg. Sometimes iliotibial band (ITB). Sometimes Achilles. Always the left.

Strength training fixed that.

Never done strength training before? Start with bodyweight exercises and core work. One small six-week study of recreational runners (Sato and Mokha, 2009) found that those who added core exercises improved their 5k time by roughly 30 seconds more than those who didn't.

That is a meaningful gain on such a short distance, and a small study is no guarantee — but it shows what a few weeks of consistent work can do.

After a period of bodyweight work, you may find it starts to feel stale — or that you're no longer getting much out of it. That's your cue to "graduate" to the weight room. A gym can feel intimidating at first. I'd recommend working with a Personal Trainer — ask them about the machines, and get proper coaching on barbell lifts like the squat or deadlift. With heavier weights involved, technique matters. Learn it right under professional guidance, and you'll avoid adding injury risk on top of training load.

These six steps are your starting point — more mileage, varied pace, tempo running, hill training, a holistic lifestyle view, and strength work.

You have the motivation and the mindset already. You wouldn't be here otherwise.

Now add smart, quality running to the mix — take the holistic view, get into strength training, and start pounding the pavement with real purpose.

Before you know it, you'll be running faster than ever before.

To set a realistic goal for your next race, enter a recent result into my race conversion calculator and see what time it predicts at other distances.

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