With 2km of a 10K to go Kaitlin Goodman felt strong. Fluid. She picked up speed and flew the last mile to cross the line with a 52-second PB. So how had she managed to do so well?
To make such a breakthrough you need to ask: What elements are missing from your training? What bad habits have you let sneak in? For Goodman the secret was miles. Although focused on the 10K she had also trained for a marathon and so she was running more miles than ever. It was uncharted territory, but the payoff was huge.
But mileage is only part of the jigsaw, just one of several key strategies you can focus on to forge a breakthrough. Over the following pages we’ll show you five others and help you identify which – or which combination of them – will bring you the greatest rewards.
1/ Emphasise endurance
Fifteen years ago, transitioning to the marathon was seen as the death knell for speed among elite runners. Then the likes of Paula Radcliffe rewrote the rulebook by returning to the track faster than ever in the months after racing 26.2 miles. Goodman believes training for a marathon six months before her 10K race made all the difference.
‘I was running longer long runs and doing workouts within long runs,’ she says. (Goodman was running 30 per cent more weekly miles in her heaviest weeks of marathon training than she would peak at in 10K training.)
Increasing your mileage brings many benefits: increased capillary density, greater numbers of mitochondria, better usage of fat as fuel, muscle fibre adaptations and higher glycogen storage. These changes allow you to maintain a desired pace for longer by making your body more efficient at oxygen usage and energy production.
One runner who has taken this to extremes is the US 100K record holder, Camille Herron. ‘Nine years ago I started running over 100 miles per week,’ she says. ‘Building that aerobic base translated to being able to sustain my speed for longer.’
Not many of us will hit weekly triple digits and increasing your mileage safely takes time, patience and often some creative thinking when it comes to time management. Elite masters runner Frankie Adkins ran a 10K PB at the age of 41. His biggest challenge was finding a way to fit the extra miles around the time constraints of family life and a job that had him travelling almost every day. ‘I fit my training around work and family, not the other way around,’ he says. ‘And there were weeks when I looked at my training there was no way I’d get it all in, but more often than not I did. Having a training plan was crucial; it kept me thinking of 30-60-minute windows where I could get the training in.’
The downside of adding volume is it does increase your risk of overuse injuries. To lower that risk, coach Ben Rosario has two recommendations: ‘First, make sure you're running on soft surfaces for the majority of your mileage,’ he says. ‘Second, put a bigger premium on postrun recovery – foam rolling, flexibility exercises and massage are the big ones.’
Rosario also stresses that patience is a virtue when you’re trying to develop your aerobic system. You may not get faster for a while, but workouts will get easier over time. ‘It’s about trusting what you're doing,’ he says.
Change this: Run more miles, even if you’re training for a 5K
Why? Upping your mileage is the best way to improve your aerobic capacity, which increases speed endurance – how long you can sustain race pace.
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The risk: Lower your recovery-day mileage and/or slow your recovery pace. Get more sleep
2/ Prioritise recovery
Elite coach Mike Caldwell believes recovery is a crucial but undervalued piece of the training jigsaw. ‘Our recovery days are vital. We’re able to run hard on our hard days because we only ran 45 minutes on Wednesdays and Fridays.’
The key to Caldwell’s system is a delineation between tough workout days and recovery days. During hard interval sessions – 5K pace, for example – his runners cover five to six miles, as opposed to the more traditional three or four miles. For his runners to handle that volume of quality, Caldwell says they must be fresh heading into the sessions.
Higher mileage means higher fitness, so you may find it mentally challenging to lower mileage on easy days to recover properly. Training volume is certainly a big factor in performance, and lowering it too much on your recovery days can be detrimental if the total aerobic stimulus is too low. Runners who are hesitant about significantly lowering their recovery-day mileage should consider slowing the pace. This reduces stress on the body while still allowing for the added volume, says Rosario. Fitness gains occur during recovery, so it’s critical to find a personal balance between the volume and intensity of hard days and easy days.
Some may opt to go longer or even to run twice on easy days. Research suggests doing two runs on easy days will increase growth hormone production and so speed recovery. There’s no one answer that works for all runners, so get in the mindset of asking yourself whether you are recovering adequately, and making changes to ensure you are.
Adequate recovery is about much more than just distance and pace, however. Eating a nutrient-rich diet, training on a variety of surfaces and wearing proper shoes can all reduce the wear and tear on your body, and speed your recovery from harder sessions. And Rosario says there’s one other ingredient that runners of all levels neglect: sleep.
It’s not just tired muscles that need rest. According to a study review in Sleep Science, sleep deprivation reduces your ability to maintain attention and increases perceived exertion. It also affects your ability to control your body temperature, making it harder to run in adverse conditions, and increases cardiac effort. In this state your central nervous system is too depleted to produce the effort needed to run fast. Generally, if you’re not getting seven to nine hours of sleep a night, you’ll be hard-pressed to run well.
Change this: Lower your recovery-day mileage and/or slow your recovery pace. Get more sleep.
Why? Failing to recover sets you up for injury and burnout.
The challenge: Failing to recover sets you up for injury and burnout.
The risk: You can lose fitness if you cut back too much; it can be tough to balance volume and recovery.
3/ Become a complete athlete
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, runners rarely thought about strength: The weights room was a torture chamber full of bodybuilders. In the last decade, if you wanted to sound like an informed member of the running world, you threw out one word about strength: core. Developing strength in those magical muscles in your abdomen, trunk and lower back was touted as the most vital ancillary work you could do.
Core stabilising muscles are certainly important, but so are the muscles, ligaments and tendons in the lower and upper body. Several studies have found evidence that lifting heavy weights, especially with the lower body, improves race times for well-trained distance runners.
More recently, attention in the strength and conditioning world has moved away from raw strength and towards reducing the discrepancy in strength and flexibility between paired muscles. ‘Functional movement is really the buzz phrase,’ says Rosario. ‘We address any biomechanical ineffciencies. We make sure strength is equal on each side.’
While exercises targeting the abs, obliques, lower back and hips are still included in this approach, so are exercises that work on the quads, hamstrings, calves, Achilles tendons, shoulders and chest muscles. Rosario’s athletes mostly use kettlebells and their own body weight. Other coaches add in balance boards, medicine balls and resistance bands. The common goal is addressing strength imbalances and applying them in a running-specific manner. To lower injury risk, Rosario’s athletes can’t move on to heavier weights until they have mastered good form.
Another option for developing strength and power is to train on steep hills. One recent study found that hill runs developed stronger hip flexors, which could be related to better form and efficiency, and faster times. Coach John Goodridge argues that hill sprints are just as effective as lunges or squats. ‘As a 67-year-old coach, I'm in the minority, old-school club and do not emphasise weight training, core or running drills,’ he says. ‘I make use of hills throughout the year.’
Goodridge is not a lone voice: Many coaches find explosive hill reps of seven to 10 seconds on a steep gradient (20-30 per cent) to be as effective as squats in building lower-body power.
Change this: Strength-train your whole body, not just your legs or midsection.
Why? You need full-body strength to run with your best form, using your full range of motion and power. Strength also reduces injury risk. You can’t get all the strength you need just by running more.
The challenge: Strength training takes extra time and energy on top of running. And runners tend to find it a tedious discipline, with none of the joy or clearly visible progress of running.
The risk: reasons why you should be deadlifting.
4/ Running the Edge: Discovering the Secrets to Better Running and a Better Life
We runners have a rather strange relationship with food. We run ourselves ravenous, but how can you refuel to enhance, rather than undo, your good work? We hear ‘experts’ extolling the virtues of eating like a caveman, abstaining from sugar, eating more fat, eating less fat, going raw, cooking slow and everything in between. What to do?
Emily Brown, a dietitian at the Mayo Clinic in the US and former elite runner, says it would be better if runners looked at the performance-enhancing qualities a food brings to the table rather than how it can hurt them. ‘I try to address nutrition from the standpoint of the positive influence it can have on health and performance, versus focusing on the negative,’ she says. ‘An optimal diet can benefit an athlete by increasing energy for training and enhancing recovery.’
One way to get better fuel is by packing your own snacks, says Brown. Healthy snacks that provide quick energy include wholewheat crackers with nut butter, dried fruit and seeds, and fruit smoothies. Minimal processing is good, because the additives found in many commercially produced foods can negatively impact your performance. And be aware that simple sugars increase the production of cortisol, a hormone that can inhibit recovery if it’s constantly flowing through the bloodstream.
That doesn’t make all processed foods bad, says Brown. Consider cereal. ‘Some are low in sugar and fortified with nutrients such as B vitamins, iron and zinc.’
Try to increase the amount of fresh, natural food you consume. Then enjoy your indulgences guilt-free.
Change this: Runners World, Part of the Hearst UK Wellbeing Network.
Why? Food is more than simply calories to burn for energy. Real foods contain nutrients that can improve cardiovascular health, speed recovery, protect you from disease, provide more consistent energy and result in prolonged periods of better health (which will, in turn, improve your running).
The challenge: Processed foods are convenient, inexpensive and well marketed. Runners may feel their regular activity writes them a nutritional blank cheque. It really doesn’t.
The risk: This plan will get you round your first marathon.
5/ Embrace positivity
Run joyfully’ is Kaitlin Goodman’s mantra, and she tries to personify this every time she heads out. But what does ‘running joyfully’ entail?
‘One, it's really living off those endorphins,’ she says. ‘I mean, how many runs do you ever regret going on? Nine out of 10 times you feel better and happier, and you have a clearer head. And try to appreciate the opportunity that you have to be out there.’
Enjoy running for runnings sake, not just for its outcomes Tim Catalano, co-author of, is a former elite runner with a degree in psychology. He says this approach is a good example of self-determinism. You can choose to focus on the positive or the negative in any endeavor and create your own experience. When Catalano tackled the six-day, 120-mile TransRockies Run last year, he really put that approach to the test.
‘There are going to be some terrible times when you run 120 miles in a week,’ he says. ‘But what I chose to remember later – and what I chose to remember in the moment – was, “This is an amazing gift that I have a body that can do this. I'm in the middle of the Rocky Mountains experiencing something very few people get to.” And when you hold on to those notions, you're just happier.’
Controlling your mental outlook is no New Age gimmick, nor a call to abandon concrete goals. You can be a positive perfectionist. Eminent German psychologists Arne Dietrich and Oliver Stoll recently published studies that show how perfectionism falls into two categories. Positive-striving perfectionism leads you to set high standards for your performance and helps you achieve your goals. Self-critical perfectionism, on the other hand, leaves you in a state of constant worry and disappointment, and is correlated with anxiety, stress and depression. Despite all their attention to detail, the research found, self-critical perfectionists were less likely to achieve their goals because any minor setback was seen as defeat.
This is one reason why the ability to experience running as an autotelic experience (one that's enjoyed for its own sake) may be the key to running faster. Putting in more miles, doing quality work and experimenting with different sessions become rewards, not chores, when pleasure is found in the act itself. That doesn’t mean every mile will be wonderful, says Goodman. But if you take a moment, even in the middle of a raging downpour, to remind yourself how fortunate you are to be running in the first place, then you’re more likely to appreciate the process.
‘We can’t change an experience,’ says Catalano. ‘But we can change how we experience that experience. You can let those dark voices overwhelm you and have a bad day, or you can make the voices focus on the good stuff, and it turns out to be a great day.’
Change this: Enjoy running for running’s sake, not just for its outcomes.
Why? Health-wise, none, although paying more attention to nutrition requires time and focus.
The challenge: Runners are naturally competitive – we use stats to reassure ourselves. It is difficult to accept the relativity of our performances and reframe our perspective. Plus, some days running doesn’t feel good, and positive psychology can feel like a load of you-know-what.
The risk: Strength-train your whole body, not just your legs or midsection.
6/ Be persistent and consistent
Tolstoy said, ‘The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.’ Regardless of our knowledge of Russian literature, we distance runners understand this better than most. But even we can be lulled into forgetting these words of wisdom when our lives get busy and our goals feel distant or even, perhaps, unattainable.
There is no doubt that year-in and year-out consistency can make all the difference in the world when it comes to getting a big jump in your running performance. ‘Distance running takes patience,’ says Colorado State University cross-country coach Art Siemers. ‘My main focus is finding athletes with the desire, commitment and patience to slowly build an aerobic base, aiming toward a big breakthrough once the body adapts to the stress of higher mileage. This can be a challenge in the age of instant gratification, but those athletes who possess patience and a strong work ethic usually succeed.’
This same type of patience, allied with its trusty comrade in arms – time – can lead to great victories for runners at every level. There will be times when it’s hard to keep putting in the tough miles of training and when it seems like you’ve plateaued. If you’re battling doubts and demotivation, simply remind yourself that staying consistent creates the changes that will lead eventually and inevitably to new levels of performance down the road. In other words, keep the faith.
Resting heart rate.
Why? Big leaps in your running performance can only be achieved by transforming your body, and those crucial transformations will only occur over time.
The challenge: It can be hard to measure the progress made in a single day and all too easy to convince yourself that it doesn’t make a difference. It’s also easier to negotiate the time and to find the willpower for a hard, short-term push than to adopt a long-term lifestyle change.
The risk: A foolish consistency that ignores your body’s signals can cause you to run while injured or get in the way of recovery.
Illustrations by Michael Byers
