How to Improve Your Running

Brooke Mays

 

Running is one of the most difficult things I’ve done in my life. It’s challenging to the mind and body. Truthfully, running is a spiritual journey that brings about the most euphoric feeling afterwards, also known as the runners high. But there’s always room for improvement and over the year I’ve found a few ways that have help me increase mileage and endurance.

 

Here are a few ways that I’ve found helped me throughout the year.

 

Sprinting short distances then walk.

Sprinting helps build your core and manages to get your heart racing. Timing yourself when sprinting can help as long as you try to beat your personal best each time. This is a great way to challenge and compete against yourself. Make sure to walk afterwards, for a short time, in order to not tire quickly.

Be careful and do warm ups because if not you can pull a hamstring and be out of commission for a while.

 

Build your endurance in the gym.

Lifting weights can help your running endurance by both balancing your body and giving you strength and muscle power. If you worry about bulking up, don’t. It’s actually very hard and takes a lot of effort to do so. Light weights will tone up the body and build some muscle that will help you run further and faster.

 

Vary the intensity each run: push harder during some.

Your body can get accustomed to the every day mile or 3 miles. Pushing yourself to go further or switch up the routines helps your performance because you’re body and mind will not get use to the repetition.

Some days less is more. Cut back a mile or so some days to change to routine and other add on an extra. It’s all about give and take with you body.

 

Run hills/stairs.

The harder it is the more rewards! Going up hill is a lot different from flat or rolling land. This can be on of the hardest things, especially when you’re use to flat land.

Running hills will help build the endurance for when you run on flat surfaces and will help you go further and faster.

 

Build your core.

The core is a very powerful tool and is important in holding up your body. You run and breathe from it. This is a vital part to increasing your endurance. The stronger your core is the better your form. Form may not seem too important but it can help prevent injury.

 

These are just a few ways to help you build endurance and train for future races. It takes time and rest to improve, along with constant practice. Train hard, rest well and you will find improve your running greatly.