My jogging/running speed is not getting any better...

[Unify]

So I have a little dilemma here. For some reason my jogging speed never gets any better. But the distance I can jog does. I can go 10 miles nonstop, the thing is, I go at a fairly slow pace. Faster than walking, but it's not exactly sprinting.

So why is it that my speed is not improving? Does that mean i'm not gaining muscle? Today I went on a jog with my cousins, and I had trouble keeping up with them....

 

[Jrahien]

Training endurance and training power are two different things. If you want to increase your speed, you should also include sprinting drills into your regular routine.

 

[ered]

There are three things that you should implement into your running routine if you want to increase your speed...

The first thing is fartleks. It's a funny word but they work great when you’re trying to build speed. Fartleks mean “speed play” in Swedish. It basically means that you play with your speed you run at. So for example you may want to start running at 40% at your top speed, run at that pace for a minute or two, and then bring up your speed to 80%. You can do this anyway you want, there are no rules to fartleks.

The second thing you can do is hill running. Practice running on hills timing yourself every time you run up a hill. This will increase your strength and help develop your fast twitch muscles, which is vital to increased speeds.

Anther thing you can do is interval training. And you should Google it because this topic is so diverse to be covered in a form thread. But they are the absolute best thing if you want to increase your running speed.