I see runners that trod along day after day, week after week at the same old pace. Their short run is done at the same speed as their long run, etc.  In hopes of actually seeing results, they continue to add days and distance until they end up injured and unable to run at all. Finally, after taking some time off, they start this endless cycle all over again. Sound familiar??

I’ve always been an advocate of quality over quantity. Spend your training time wisely and focus on the aspects of training that will help you the most, forget the so called “junk miles.” If you want to run fast, you’ve got to run fast in training. You’ll never do all your training at a 10 min per mile pace, then pull off a 7 min/mile race. Nope, it’ll never happen. You’ve got to train hard, then recover, train hard, then recover if you want to get better.

If you go out and try to train hard everyday, you don’t allow your body to recover. Mentally you may feel like you are training hard, but after a few days your performance will start to suffer.  I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “Train Smarter, Not Harder.”

A recent article published in the Journal of Applied Physiology proves that runners can run less and be faster. IN the study, runners did a few 30 second sprints 3-4 times per week. All the runners improved even with the reduced training volume. Even though we really don’t know the background of the runners, I think it’s safe to say we could all improve if we added a little intensity and dropped a little volume.

Check out the article here: Train Less, Be Faster

What do you think?