Speed Development

How and why to improve your real speed

There’s speed work, and then there’s speed work. When most runners talk about doing speed work,
they mean things like mile repeats at 10K race pace, or a set of fast 200s, or maybe even a 5-mile tempo
run. Such workouts, of course, are integral to becoming a faster runner. But they’re not really speed
work, if by “speed” we mean the fastest you can run for a very short distance. When I talk about speed, I
mean your maximal velocity — your top speed — which even world-class sprinters can sustain for no
more than 30-40m.

But here’s the thing: This type of speed is also integral to being the best distance runner you can be.
Improve your basic speed, and you’ll run faster in all your races, even the marathon. That’s why all the
runners I coach, such as 2010 national indoor 3K champion Renee Metivier Baillie and 1:02 half
marathoner Brent Vaughn, do regular speed-development workouts. To understand why, let’s start by
looking more closely at what speed is and isn’t.
A Quick Overview of Speed
Speed is not 5K race pace or even mile race pace, let alone 10K or half marathon race pace. A typical
miler’s workout, such as 20 x 200m at mile pace with 200m jogs, isn’t a true speed workout; rather, it’s a
race-specificity workout that teaches the body to run a certain pace while challenging the anaerobic
metabolism. The same is true of workouts you might do on a regular basis, such as 1200m repeats at 5K
race pace. That workout is about improving your body’s metabolic abilities (its plumbing, in so many
words) at race pace. It has nothing to do with developing your basic speed.
Again, by “speed” I mean the top speed you can reach for a very short distance. Why does this matter to
you? After all, it’s unlikely you’ll find yourself crouched in the starting blocks for a 100m race anytime
soon.
The reason that your basic speed matters is that it’s a window into a broader continuum of paces, i.e.,
speeds, that you need to run to perform your best. When you improve your basic speed, you become
more efficient at the other speeds you need to hit — your repeats at 5K race pace, your tempo runs —
to race well. There are lots of reasons why this is so; for most Running Timesreaders it has to do with
coordination.
Coordinated Efforts
Don’t think of coordination as patting your head with one hand, rubbing your tummy with the other, all
while standing on one leg with your eyes closed. Instead, think of coordination as better communication
between the muscle fibers involved in running and the nervous system. If you regularly do specific
speed-development work, the result will be obvious to the casual observer — you’ll simply look better
running.
Speed is, at its essence, an issue of coordination between all of the muscle fibers involved in running and
your nervous system. Numerous studies have found that, while VO2 max and lactate threshold are
important components of running fitness, the key to running faster is improving running economy, the
intersection between your metabolic fitness (i.e., your heart, lungs, mitochondria) and your mechanical
ability to move over the ground (i.e., muscles, tendons and the nerves that direct them). Many of the
latest advances in the world of running, from Pose Running and footwear like the Vibram Five Fingers to
stability training on a Bosu and single-leg lunges, have underlying them this concept of improving a
runner’s mechanical efficiency. Yet most runners focus only on developing their aerobic fitness and
anaerobic fitness, the metabolic components of fitness, and neglect the fact that if you can run more
efficiently you’ll be able to race faster. Specifically, if at the cellular level you can use a greater
percentage of your muscle fibers available to do work, you’ll race faster. This is where speed
development comes in.

Fiber Facts
All humans have some amount of fast-twitch muscle fibers; these fibers are white and can generate a
great deal of force in a short amount of time. Conversely, all humans have red slow-twitch fibers that
can’t produce much force, yet they are highly resistant to fatigue and allow us to run marathons or hike
for eight-12 hours at a time. In between these two ends of the continuum are intermediate fibers that
have qualities of the fast and slow; they can produce a moderate amount of force yet they are also fairly
resistant to fatigue. And it’s these fibers that most distance runners neglect, because their training lacks
the requisite intensity to “recruit” these fibers.
So how does your body “choose” which muscle to recruit when running? Simple. The skeletal muscles in
the human body are organized into “motor units,” each of which is essentially one neuron connected to
a bundle of fibers. When the neuron fires, all of the muscles in that motor unit fire.
Relative to running, the fatigue-resistant motor units are smaller and comprised primarily of slow-twitch
muscle fibers, while the largest motor units are made up of fast-twitch fibers. The human body
essentially takes the path of least resistance along this neural-activation continuum. Only activities that
require a great deal of force — such as sprinting across a street or squatting to lift a heavy box — cross a
threshold of intensity to recruit the largest motor units, ones that control the intermediate and fast-
twitch fibers. When you’re jogging or running easy, the nervous system needs to recruit only small
motor units comprised of slow-twitch fibers; this makes sense, given that you don’t need to produce a
lot of force to plod along at your normal recovery pace.
But the recruitment of fast-twitch fibers is different.
Let’s say you’re leisurely walking along a street, latte in hand, and as you cross the street you turn to see
a Mack truck barreling down on you. You sprint across the street to safety (dropping the latte — oh,
well). In that short moment in time you, the distance runner, did something you rarely do. You were
forced to recruit fast-twitch fibers because you had to put more force into the ground to sprint across
the street to safety, channeling your inner Bolt. If we want to be better runners, we need to ask our
bodies to recruit those fast-twitch fibers more often. While the body is always recruiting all three types
of fibers during running, the reality is that when you’re running half marathon pace you’re not recruiting
nearly as many fast-twitch and intermediate fibers as you would in the Mack truck example.
That’s what we want to change with a speed-development workout — we want you to go fast enough to
recruit those fast-twitch fibers, and the only way to do that is to run fast enough that the body is forced
to ask the big motor units to power the activity. As I like to explain it, your nervous system is like an
eighth-grade boy. It knows exactly how little work it can do to get by, and the only way to get it to work
more is to kick it in the butt. Asking nicely won’t work. Doing strides at mile pace won’t, either.
The Workouts
The goal of a speed-development workout is simply to “call on” the fibers that aren’t recruited in large
numbers when jogging or even running threshold or race pace. The improved coordination between
your metabolic system and bodily mechanics from these workouts will result in faster, more efficient
running at other effort levels.
Before you attempt speed-development workouts you need to be honest about two questions. Is your
posterior chain strong, and have you done some hill strides?
The posterior chain is simply the muscles of the back of the body; for a runner, the low back, gluteal
muscles and hamstrings are of special importance. If you’ve not done work to strengthen these areas in
the recent past, you’re probably well advised to do the general strength routine I’ve developed as a
video series for the Running TimesWeb site; see runningtimes.com/gsvideos.
Once you have the necessary posterior chain strength then you should improve your coordination and
strength in a sport-specific manner: This is where hill strides come in. You can do either the short ramp
hills of 40m-70m popularized by Brad Hudson (see runningtimes.com/hillsprints) or you can run up a
gentle 1-2 percent grade for 100m-200m (and ideally you’d do a mix of both).
After three to six weeks of doing hills two to three times a week, you’re ready to tackle the following
workouts, which are presented in a progression that must be followed. For these workouts, you should
wear your most aggressive race footwear. If you run only road races, then that’s a road flat. If you’re
someone who at least once a year races in track spikes then you should definitely do this workout in
your spikes. The athletes I work with never do this workout in anything but track spikes, even when
they’ve got a road race as their next competition.
Workout No. 1: 150 In-n-Outs
This first workout is not only a great way to learn how to run fast, but it may also become part of your
pre-race, pre-workout routine as well. The concept is simple: On a 150m run, accelerate gradually during
the first 50m; then run the middle 50m at a rhythm that is faster than mile race pace, then cruise out of
that rhythm the last 50m. Jog or walk 250m to recover and repeat.
If you start in the middle of a curve on a 400m track then you have a 50m buildup on the curve, 50m of
fast running to halfway down the straight and 50m cruising into the finish at the end of the straight.
Start with three to four of these and work up to six to eight with each middle 50m getting a bit faster.
Don’t worry about anything other than the pace of the middle 50m.
Take as much rest as you want, as the intent of this workout is not to endure anything, but rather to
recruit more fibers. You gain nothing by speeding up the recovery to a steady jog when running 150 In-
n-Outs. We want that middle 50m patch to be faster than you’ve run in years, eventually getting to the
point that you’re running as fast as you can while still running controlled and relaxed in your neck and
shoulders.
Workout No. 2: 30m Max Patch
Once you’ve done several weekly sessions of 150 In-n-Outs, you can progress to this workout. To start,
you’ll do three to four of the 150m In-n-Outs. Then you’ll run 2-3 x 30m at 97 percent; though
technically you’re not running at your maximum, most people will actually run a bit faster with the cue
of “97 percent” rather than “all-out” or “as fast as you can” because they will stay more relaxed in their
neck, face and shoulders.
Every high school and collegiate 400m track has 30m clearly marked, as the 400m relay exchange zone is
20m, with a 10m acceleration zone preceding it. On most 400m tracks two big triangles mark the 20m
zone, with a small triangle 10m prior. This 30m “patch” will be our focus. The crux of the workout is
simply a 2-3 (or 3-4) x 30m patch with a 50m run-in. I like to have athletes run this coming off the
second turn, using the final relay zone as the patch for the fast 30m because building up to 97 percent
on the turn is a novel stimulus and in some ways it’s protective, in that the athlete will be running much
of the 30m patch on the curve, making it more difficult to get to max velocity (but still recruiting a large
percentage of the athlete’s motor units).
The recovery is 3 minutes walking. Yes, walking. Running 30m at 97 percent is metabolically powered by
the phosphocreatine system, and 3 minutes of walking will allow that system to replenish nearly all of
ATP needed for the next 30m sprint. Sprinters walk during practice, and in this workout, so should you.
Workout No. 3: Finish with 120s
This workout is really about feeling good while running fast. You simply run 3-4 x 120m at a “fun fast”
pace. But you do this after you’ve done 3-4 x 150m In-n-Outs and after you’ve done two or three 30m
Max Patches.
Most athletes are surprised at how fast they can comfortably run 120m, yet a key to feeling good is to
either jog the remaining 280m slow, or walk 100m, then jog 180m until the next 120m. One athlete I
work with jokes that we never run 120s because I ask them to build up for 30m and then hold their “fun
fast” speed for 120m; to him these are 150s, but to me they are 120s because that is the distance that
you hold that “fun fast” speed.
This final workout of the progression — 3-4 x 150m In-n-Outs, then 2-3 x 30m at 97 percent, ending with
3-4 x 120m — doesn’t add up to a mile of running, yet it’s extremely challenging, and for that reason
you should run an easy recovery run the following day.
That fact leads me to the final aspect of speed development. When you’ve done these workouts once
every seven-10 days, you should, after four to six weeks, be able to run faster strides, whether it’s 150m,
200m or even 300m distances. Once you’ve done a few speed-development workouts you can, on the
subsequent day, run easy for 20-30 minutes and then do your pre-race warm-up routine, change into
your flats and do something like 5 x 200m with 200m or 400m slow jogging (emphasis on the slow) at
mile pace, or simply a pace that feels “fun fast” — challenging for 200m but you’re not grabbing your
knees afterwards. Your legs will “remember” the pace from the day before and most athletes report
that they feel very comfortable running the paces on the second day. While I don’t do this every week, a
speed-development day followed by an easy run with some 200s is a great way to boost confidence
while ensuring that you’re fully recovering from the other workouts on your schedule.