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Running Speed Training Plan
To enhance your running speed, a structured training plan is essential. This involves incorporating various workouts, focusing on strength, and ensuring adequate recovery. Here's a guide to creating an effective running speed training plan:
1. Setting Goals:
- Establish clear objectives. Define what you want to achieve, whether improving sprint times, mastering a skill like block starts, or peaking at a specific event.
- Mark your target on a calendar and build your plan in reverse, working back to the very first day.
2. Training Phases:
- Preparation Phase: Emphasize duration over intensity. Include easy runs, aerobic threshold runs, and progression runs. Gradually increase the duration of your runs each week.
- Pre-Competition Phase: Balance intensity and duration. Maintain long easy runs for aerobic capacity and add more intensity to continuous running sessions. Introduce event-specific endurance.
3. Weekly Workout Structure:
- Include speed workouts one to two days a week and allow a day for recovery between each.
- Incorporate four to five sessions of easy running to aerobic threshold running, including a long run.
- Add one to two sessions of fartlek running up to lactate threshold pace for short bursts.
4. Types of Speed Workouts:
- Strides: Short bursts of speed to introduce the body to high-stress speed work. Warm-up with dynamic drills, run at an easy pace for 45 minutes, and finish with four to six 20-second strides at maximum effort with 30 to 45-second recovery jogs between each.
- 400-Meter Repeats: Ease into intervals. Warm-up, then run eight 400-meter repeats with 2 minutes of rest in between each interval. Finish with a cool-down run.
- Varying Intervals: A more intense workout that includes shorter recoveries. Warm-up, run eight 600-meter repeats at 5K goal pace with 200-meter recovery jogs, then four 200-meter repeats at 1-mile pace with 200-meter recovery jogs. Finish with a cool-down.
- Increasing-Distance Sprints: Example: 80m, 90m, 100m, 110m, 120m, 130m, 140m, 150m, 160m, 170m, 180m, 190m, 200m. Walk back to the start line for recovery. Aim to run relaxed for each run at about 80% of your max. Think ‘form’.
- Standard Intervals: A very good session is 10 x 400m. As you get fitter, change the recoveries on an ad hoc basis.
- Alternating Hard and Easy: Alternate hard 100m (90%) with easier 100m (80%).
Read: Best running technique for speed
5. Off-Season Sprinting Workouts (Example):
- Week 1:
- Acceleration Training: 8 x 30 meters with 3-minute recovery.
- Recovery Day: 10 x 100m (70%) in 17-20 seconds with walk-back recovery.
- Speed Training: 5 x 50 meters with 3-minute recovery.
- Endurance Day: Fartlek (45 seconds easy, 15 seconds at 70% intensity) for 15 minutes.
- Acceleration or Resistance Runs: Hills: 10 x 30 meters with 3-minute recovery.
- Speed Endurance Training: 6 x 100 meters (build up speed) with walk-back recovery.
- Week 3:
- Acceleration Training: 10 x 30 meters with 5-minute recovery.
- Recovery Day: 8 x 150m (70%) in 30-40 seconds with 3-minute recovery.
- Speed Training: 5 x 50 meters with 3-minute recovery.
- Endurance Day: Fartlek (30 seconds easy, 30 seconds at 75% intensity) for 20 minutes.
- Acceleration or Resistance Runs: Sled Pulls: 10 x 20 meters with 3-minute recovery.
- Speed Endurance Training: 12 x 80 meters (build up speed) with walk-back recovery.
6. Strength Training:
- Incorporate exercises like deadlifts, squats, box squats, and split squats to strengthen the lower body, focusing on glutes and hamstrings.
- Don't ignore the upper body and core, as they provide stability and improve arm drive.
7. Important Considerations:
- Warm-up: Begin each workout with dynamic drills.
- Cool-down: End with a cool-down.
- Recovery: Allow adequate rest between workouts.
- Progression: Gradually increase the intensity and volume of your workouts.
- Listen to Your Body: Adjust the plan based on how your body feels to prevent overtraining and injuries.
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