From Slow to Sprint: How to Increase Running Speed for Any Runner

Want to shave minutes off your personal best or simply feel faster on your runs? Increasing running speed isn’t just about running harder; it’s about training smarter, building strength, perfecting your form, and prioritising recovery. Here are key steps and tips to include in your article:

1. Incorporate Speed Workouts

While consistent easy mileage builds your endurance base, to truly unlock faster gears, you must intentionally introduce speed workouts into your routine. Think of it as teaching your body a new language: you might be fluent in long, conversational runs, but speed work introduces the rapid-fire, explosive phrases that elevate your pace. These aren’t about grinding out every single stride at maximal effort; rather, they’re precise sessions designed to challenge your cardiovascular system, recruit dormant fast-twitch muscle fibres, and improve your running economy, ultimately making your “comfortable” pace feel significantly faster and your “fast” pace sustainable for longer.

2. Build Strength and Power

Think of your body as a high-performance engine: speed workouts provide the fuel and tuning, but building strength and power provides the raw horsepower. Running fast isn’t just about how quickly your legs turn over; it’s about the explosive force your muscles can generate with each stride, propelling you forward and resisting fatigue. By incorporating targeted strength training and plyometrics, you’re not just making your muscles bigger, but making them more efficient, resilient, and powerful, translating directly into a more robust stride, a quicker push-off, and the ability to maintain speed even when your body screams to slow down.

3. Refine Your Running Form

While often overlooked in the pursuit of pure mileage, refining your running form is akin to optimising aerodynamics on a race car: it’s about eliminating drag and maximising efficiency. Instead of fighting against yourself with each stride, subtle adjustments to your posture, arm swing, and foot strike can transform your effort into forward momentum. This isn’t about rigid adherence to a “perfect” model, but rather discovering the most economical way your body can move, allowing you to conserve energy, reduce injury risk, and unlock untapped speed by ensuring every ounce of power you generate is propelling you forward, not battling unnecessary movement.

4. Prioritise Recovery

Paradoxically, some of your biggest speed gains happen when you’re not running. Prioritising recovery isn’t merely about feeling less tired; it’s the critical window where your body adapts, repairs microscopic muscle tears, replenishes energy stores, and strengthens itself for future demands. Neglecting adequate sleep, proper nutrition, and strategic rest days is like trying to build a skyscraper without letting the concrete cure – you’ll eventually crumble. Embrace recovery as an integral, non-negotiable part of your training, and you’ll discover that a well-rested, fully fuelled body is a body primed to perform faster and longer.

5. Be Consistent and Patient

Achieving true running speed isn’t a single “aha!” moment, but a persistent journey of incremental gains. It demands consistency, showing up for the easy miles, the challenging speed sessions, and the crucial recovery, even when motivation wanes or the weather turns sour. And it requires immense patience, understanding that physiological adaptations take weeks, months, and even years to manifest. There will be plateaus, setbacks, and days when you feel slower than ever, but by trusting the process, sticking to your plan, and celebrating the small, steady improvements, you’ll inevitably build a faster, stronger, and more resilient running self.

6. Cross-train!

While dedicated running sessions are paramount, cross-training serves as your secret weapon for holistic speed development and robust injury prevention. By engaging in non-running activities like cycling, swimming, or elliptical, you build your cardiovascular engine and strengthen supporting muscle groups without the repetitive impact of running. This not only allows stressed tendons and joints a much-needed reprieve, fostering recovery and resilience, but also enhances overall athleticism, ensuring you return to the pavement with a stronger, more balanced body, ready to push past previous limits.

You can even try spinning, swimming and HIIT training. All this extra training will translate to improving your running speed.

7. Add some fartleks

Want to inject an element of spontaneous fun into your speed development? Then it’s time to add some Fartleks to your running repertoire. Derived from the Swedish for “speed play,” Fartlek sessions are less structured than traditional intervals, allowing you to intuitively vary your pace based on how you feel and the terrain around you. Sprint to that next lamppost, cruise easily to the bend, then pick up the pace again for the uphill stretch – this playful approach to speed work trains your body to adapt to fluctuating demands, builds both aerobic and anaerobic fitness, and sharpens your ability to surge and recover, all while keeping your runs dynamic and engaging.

8. Invest in quality running gear

While speed is primarily forged through training and dedication, investing in quality running gear provides the crucial support system that can subtly enhance your performance and significantly reduce barriers to consistency. It’s not about expensive gadgets guaranteeing instant speed, but about equipping yourself with shoes that offer the right blend of cushioning and responsiveness for your biomechanics, and apparel that wicks away sweat and prevents chafing, allowing you to focus purely on your effort rather than discomfort. The right gear becomes an extension of your body, minimising energy waste and maximising comfort, ultimately enabling you to train harder, more often, and with greater confidence in your pursuit of faster times.

Editor recommended running gear: