How to Run a Faster 5K

Whether you’re a young runner trying to be more competitive in races or a recent convert to running via the bevy of popular “couch to 5K” programs out there, there will come a time when you’re no longer satisfied with just being able to run for five kilometers straight and instead want to do it fast, or at least faster than you previously could manage. That’s called growth and it’s totally natural, but it does beg the question: how exactly do you improve your 5K times? The path to faster running speeds isn’t perfectly linear, especially over longer distances, and it’s incredibly easy to fumble your training and actually set yourself for failure by increasing your risk of injury or fatiguing your muscles from an excess of training volume. Your mantra should be to train smarter rather than train harder, at least initially, and it pays to have some general guidelines to follow. RELATED: Best Running Shoes With that being said, here’s some actionable advice to help you drop your times and pass the competition. How to Set a New Personal Best in a 5K Run It starts with getting quantitative. You can become a reasonably good runner just winging it, provided you’re consistent and working hard, but setting new personal bests will require fine tuning your approach, and that means using numbers. Establish Your Baseline Before you can set a goal, you have to have a benchmark, a rough idea of your starting pace for running five kilometers. And getting this isn’t as straightforward as you might think, especially if you don’t just run around a track all the time. Variables like atmosphere, weather conditions, elevation, running surface and more can all have an impact on your times, irrespective of your running ability. If you don’t already time your runs, it’s time to start doing that. Almost every popular running app, most of which can be paired with a lightweight wearable tracker, can do this for you, automating the hard stuff and spitting out numbers like distance, time and pace, but we’re going to go one step further and encourage you to collect a bunch of data, across multiple runs, and then take an average 5K time. That average is now your benchmark, the goal time you’re trying to beat. Increase Your Training Volume Now that you have a benchmark, the next step is to adjust your training volume accordingly. There are two main variables we can manipulate here: duration of run and number of runs per week. If you’re only going for a run two or three times a week, it’s time to bump that up to four or five times a week. If you only ever run a 5K and then stop, it’s time to gradually increase the distance, regardless of whether or not your pace drops off. Your muscles and cardiovascular system respond to both intensity and volume, and adding volume is a fantastic and relatively risk-free way to prepare your body for what you’re asking of it. Of course, you can’t go crazy here. The Rocky approach, of going from lackadaisical to beast mode overnight, is a recipe for injury, not victory. Be modest in your approach, adding a kilometer here or there, or a single added run per week, and you’ll reap the rewards sooner than you think. Incorporate Interval Training We mentioned that volume is one of the two main variables you can play with to take your training to new heights; intensity is the other variable, and when it comes to getting faster, it’s also extremely important. Obviously, when it comes to speed, sprinting (basically running at your maximum effort) is the gold standard, but sprinting is also extremely taxing on the body, necessitating longer recovery times. That’s why interval training is such a game-changer. By simply interspersing jogging and sprinting intervals in a single workout, you can reap many of the benefits of sprinting without overly taxing your body with a full sprint workout. Moreover, that rapid change in intensity and effort mimics the conditions of real-life running, especially competition running, when you might have to tackle an uphill portion of a run or use a burst of speed to pass a competitor. Ease into your interval training, with large gaps between sprint sessions and minimal sprint durations, gradually increasing the sprint time and decreasing the interval length as you get accustomed to the new intensity. Shed Excess Fat This one is kind of a no-brainer, but many beginners overlook it or fail to prioritize it. If you watch high-level running competitions, whether professional or amateur, you’ll see body types tend to standardize. Sprinters are buff; distance runners are extremely lean; absolutely no one is carrying excess body fat, for the obvious reason that body fat is just dead weight when you’re trying to run faster or longer. A drop of even five pounds can make a very large difference in optimizing your running stride, helping you gain speed and expend less energy, so consider auditing your diet and finding easy ways to drop unnecessary calories (dessert and sugary drinks are a great place to start). Many a runner has been totally shocked at how minor changes in their body composition can result in major improvements in their times, and for beginner runners especially, this is the lowest of the low hanging fruit. You Might Also Dig: How to Get Proper Running FormBest Trail Running ShoesHow to Teach Yourself Not to Hate Running