If you’ve been running for a while and are looking to get faster, but it just doesn’t feel as easy as it used to feel…
You’re definitely not alone.
After you’ve been training for a while, progress becomes more difficult.
Some of it might just be getting older, but that’s not the only reason we see plateaus in training.
After a few months or years of doing any activity, you’ve just already done most of the simple stuff that leads to fast results.
Which means we have to get a little more… creative with our training.
Whenever we first start something, we see progress pretty quickly.
You PR every race.
You run longer and longer distances.
You drop a couple of minutes off your easy pace.
But then that progress starts to slow down.
It’s not that you’ve changed or that what you’re doing is wrong.
It just means you’ll have to do a little more targeted work if you want to take it to the next level.
Now, some people will tell you that all you have to do is “run more.”
That’s not bad advice for a lot of people.
If you’re only running 2-3 hours per week, then increasing your weekly training volume is one of the best things you can do to see progress.
Yet if you’re already running 5… 6… 7 hours every week, then just “running more” probably isn’t going to do the trick.
You’ll probably have to swap some of those easy miles for targeted speed work.
You’ll probably want to double and triple check that most of those easy miles are actually easy rather than “kinda easy.”
You’ll probably want to make sure you’re including things like strides and surges.
And you’ll probably want to do a couple of sessions of strength training every week.
At some point, just doing more of the same thing isn’t actually going to provide results.
You have to add some variety and provide different stimuli if you want to see results.
We also have to focus on recovery.
As we increase our training, we have to increase our recovery.
That means eating more – both throughout your day and while running – and ensuring that your food has what you need to achieve the performance you want.
That also means doing things like stretching – at least on the muscles that are tight and causing you problems.
And that 15s calf stretch against the light post while you wait for the light to change isn’t actually going to cut it.
I mean a real, concentrated stretch on problem areas.
It might even mean sleeping more.
And since we can’t just create more hours in the day, it also requires some planning and preparation to get all of this done.
Progress is possible.
You’re not broken.
You’re not “too old.”
Your body’s just begging for a better strategy if you want to keep making progress.
If you’re not sure where to start, send me a message and we’ll schedule a time where I can try to point you in a better direction.