Wish you were faster?
I am no speed demon. I don’t wear a “3″ on the back of my running shirt. Speed is a goal, but something I have not focused on, until now. My first running goal was to run a 10k without having to stop and walk – check. Next up was the half marathon – check. Final destination was the marathon – check. Now that I have built up a pretty decent foundation, I would like to shorten the amount of time it takes to cover these distances. Research points to interval training.
Last night, I hit the treadmill for an interval workout and while it was tough, it felt great. I really felt like I was doing something. Got my heart rate up to 180 a couple of times – not sure that is recommended, but it made me feel kind of tough. I have probably expressed my dislike of the treadmill before, but sometimes it’s my only choice and the intervals made it much more enjoyable.
There are tons of interval training tips and workouts online if you simply google “5k interval training“. One of my personal favorites, least complicated and by far the funniest to say is the Fartlek (no, this is not a typo) method, which in summary is a training method in which you can say “I am going to run as fast as I can to that stop sign up there”. Once you make it to your goal, you slow your pace and recover until you find your next stop sign, park bench or attractive runner that you would like to catch up to (for all you single runners out there) and go hard again. Author’s Tip — try not to look like a total dork when you are doing speed workouts. We have all seen “those guys” that are running fast and completely out of control and it’s not a good look.
Here is a workout that I have not personally tried, but it looks like a good one and it’s based on time, not distance, so you can do this on any of your runs:
| Interval | How to Run | |
| Warm up | 5 minutes – walk/slow jog | |
| Work Interval | 1 minute at 5K race pace | |
| Rest Interval | Recover (easy pace) for 1 minute. | |
| Work Interval | 2 minutes at 5K race pace | |
| Rest Interval | Recover (easy pace) for 2 minutes. | |
| Work Interval | 3 minutes at 5K race pace | |
| Rest Interval | Recover (easy pace) for 2 minutes. | |
| Work Interval | 4 minutes at 5K race pace | |
| Rest Interval | Recover (easy pace) for 2 minutes. | |
| Work Interval | 5 minutes at 5K race pace | |
| Rest Interval | Recover (easy pace) for 2 minutes. | |
| Work Interval | 4 minutes at 5K race pace | |
| Rest Interval | Recover (easy pace) for 2 minutes. | |
| Work Interval | 3 minutes at 5K race pace | |
| Rest Interval | Recover (easy pace) for 2 minutes. | |
| Work Interval | 2 minutes at 5K race pace | |
| Rest Interval | Recover (easy pace) for 2 minutes. | |
| Work Interval | 1 minute at 5K race pace | |
| Cool down | Slowly jog for 5 minutes. |
Any other workouts or speed training tips that you have to share? Send us some feedback.
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Love that picture of the running of the bulls that went with the post. I’m a beginner runner with my first goal of completing a 5k and my second goal will of course be to do it faster. I’ll have to look into this fartlek method of speed training.
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