Goal 8 - Increase Your Sprint Speed

You are probably wondering what the heck sprint speed has to do with marathon running. It’s true that you probably won’t approach sprint speed during your marathon with the possible exception of your finishing kick. Is it worth training to improve your sprint speed for the final seconds of your race? The answer is a surprising yes! Sprint training will do several things to improve your marathon performance.

Neuromuscular Conditioning

Sprint training sends rapid fire signals to your muscles telling them to contract. Training at sprint speed makes your muscles more coordinated in contracting and producing movement. As a result you become a smoother, more fluid runner with faster and quicker turnover. It improves your running economy, decreases your ground contact time and increases your power.

Lactate Turnpoint Training

Running at high intensities builds up both lactic acid and potassium at rapid rates. Sprint pace training challenges your body to adapt and learn to both process that build up and also to continue to run at a quality pace with high levels of lactate and potassium. Your LT pace increases and your marathon pace improves right along with it.

Total Pace Improvement

When you improve one running pace all of your paces tend to improve along with it. You already know that when you improve your LT pace or your vVO2 max pace your marathon pace improves. Your sprint pace does the same thing. When your maximum running speed increases it becomes your previous top running speed becomes a slightly easier pace that you can maintain for just a bit longer. All of your paces adjust upwards along with that sprint pace. Recent studies have shown that your marathon pace can actually be estimated with surprising accuracy using your sprint pace performance.

Sprint pace training is best accomplished by adding in some sprints or “strides” at the end of your daily training runs. You can also speed up to sprint pace for the last 100 to 200 meters of your other workouts. That training strategy works well for improving your finishing kick at the end of your race because you are practicing a fast finish when you are already fatigued.

Continue to Train Your Brain

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