We all want to know how to run faster. Everyone envisions a PR, whether that’s faster times on the track or crushing your next marathon. In our minds, we see ourselves channeling our inner Shalane Flanagan down the home stretch of a race, picking up speed as we blow past our competition, crossing the line in first place. But running faster is easier said than done.
The reality is: There are times when—whether it be in the first or the final mile—our breath becomes labored, our lungs burn, and our legs just can’t seem to turn over any quicker. So just what is the secret for how to run faster?
In the past, we believed our lead muscles were caused by a buildup of lactic acid, but more recent science has found that these sensations each correspond to a different mini-crisis in your body, and they combine to determine whether you can hold your pace.
In 2015, scientists from around the world gathered in San Diego for a special conference to share the latest results in their search for the ultimate limits of endurance. They discussed the many factors affecting your run, from metabolites and mental fatigue to heat and hydration.
Their findings help explain five common running roadblocks. Here, we outline each issue they looked at and break down how to run faster.
“I can’t catch my breath!”
Cause: Oxygen deficit
Occurrence: Shortly after starting to run Antidote: A “priming” warmup, including a sustained burst of intense running
Kirsten Ulve
The first rep of an interval workout always feels hard. You’re gasping for air; your heart is pounding. The next rep, though, is a bit easier. “Your breathing rate doesn’t actually fall; you just kind of settle into it,” says Andrew Jones, Ph.D., an exercise physiologist at the University of Exeter in England. What you’re experiencing is the result of a temporary mismatch between the oxygen your legs require and the oxygen your heart and lungs are able to deliver.
When you start running, your muscles’ oxygen needs immediately spike upward, but the time it takes for the rest of your body to respond is dictated by your “oxygen kinetics,” or response time. This oxygen deficit then triggers signals that cause your breathing and heart rate to speed up, dilate the blood vessels, and activate oxygen-processing enzymes in the muscles themselves. As a result, within two to three minutes, your muscles are getting enough oxygen.
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The temporary oxygen shortage has lasting implications, though. To meet the energy shortfall, your muscles tap into their precious supply of anaerobic (oxygen-free) fuel stores. That produces metabolic byproducts that make your muscles feel fatigued—and it also leaves you with less energy for the final anaerobic sprint at the end of the race. “What you burn up in the first couple of minutes is never going to replenish unless you slow right down,” Jones says.
To fight oxygen deficit, Jones and others are studying an approach called “priming,” which gets that first-rep fatigue out of the way before the race. Ten to 20 minutes prior to the start, include a sustained burst of intense running in your warmup, 45 to 60 seconds at 5K race pace, for example. This priming run will activate enzymes and dilate blood vessels, while also allowing you enough time to recover before the race starts.
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“I’m running harder, but I’m not speeding up!”
Cause: Inefficient muscle-fiber recruitment
Occurrence: Sustained medium efforts like 10K to half marathon Antidote: Train your fast-twitch fibers to be more efficient
Kirsten Ulve
The early miles of a half marathon often feel pretty easy. You’re not sprinting fast enough to accumulate high levels of lactate and other metabolites; and unlike in a marathon, you’re not running far enough to empty fuel stores. So why does it eventually—and inevitably—get hard?
The answer, according to studies from the University of Copenhagen, once again depends on oxygen kinetics. Over the course of a sustained run at half marathon pace or faster, the amount of energy (and thus oxygen) needed to maintain that pace gradually inches upward. Over the course of 10 or 20 minutes, your oxygen consumption can drift upward by as much as 25 percent, making it progressively harder to hold your pace.
This drift is the result of a shift to less-efficient muscle fibers. When you start running, you automatically recruit mostly slow-twitch muscle fibers, which are suited for long-distance running because they’re efficient and take a long time to fatigue. As time goes on, though, individual fibers begin to fatigue and run low on fuel. To replace them, your brain recruits fast-twitch fibers, which demand more energy—and oxygen—to deliver the same output.
One way to tackle this problem is to train your fast-twitch fibers, which are usually deployed for explosive movements, to be more efficient. “This might be one reason long runs are so important for marathoners,” Jones explains. A 2.5-hour run, even at a slow pace, will eventually deplete slow-twitch fibers and force fast-twitch ones to practice delivering slow-and-steady power. In response, they’ll build endurance by ramping up mitochondrial content and adding capillaries to supply more blood.
“My legs are on fire!”
Cause: Metabolite accumulation in your muscles triggers signals to your brain.
Occurrence: Mile or 5K races, fast surges, or finishing sprints Antidote: Short, fast interval workouts
Kirsten Ulve
Imagine the searing muscular discomfort of a hard interval workout—focused entirely in your thumb. That’s the odd sensation that 10 lucky volunteers in a University of Utah lab experienced in 2014, when a research team led by professors Alan Light and Markus Amann injected a cocktail of metabolites—the chemical byproducts that build up in your muscles during intense effort—into their thumbs. The results were profound: They created sensations of fatigue in subjects not moving a muscle.
For decades, scientists and athletes have talked about “lactic acid burn” triggered by intense exercise. When you run hard, you eventually reach a point where your aerobic energy system—the ultra-efficient fuel supply that relies on oxygen delivered by your heart and lungs—can’t supply energy to your muscles quickly enough. You turn instead to anaerobic (oxygen-free) energy sources, which provide much-needed fuel but also generate metabolites that build up in your muscles. One of those metabolites is, indeed, lactate (a molecule that’s closely related to lactic acid). But despite its nasty reputation, lactate, on its own, doesn’t make you tired.
Light and Amann tried injecting their volunteers with three different metabolites: lactate; protons, which make your muscle more acidic; and adenosine triphosphate, a form of cellular fuel. When the chemicals were injected alone or in pairs, nothing happened. But when they injected all three together—bingo! At first the subjects reported feelings like “fatigue” and “heavy” in their thumbs, even though they were sitting. Then, when researchers injected higher metabolite levels that would correspond to all-out exercise, the sensations shifted to “ache” and “hot”—the so-called lactic burn, created in a test tube.
The results show that, regardless of what it feels like, your muscles aren’t being dissolved by lactic acid. It’s only when special receptors in your leg muscles detect a particular combination of metabolites that they trigger a distress signal that travels up your spinal cord, which your brain interprets as a burning sensation. One solution? Train the receptors to be a little less sensitive by repeatedly triggering them in training. “The first time you do intervals after the off-season, you think you’re dying,” notes Amann. But after just one or two workouts, “it already feels a bit better.”
“I can hardly lift my legs!”How To Run Faster In Gmod
Cause: Metabolite accumulation hinders muscle contraction.
Occurrence: Near the end of hard races Antidote: Prudent pacing
Kirsten Ulve
Okay, so now we know that the “lactic burn” is really just a sensation in the brain, triggered by nerve sensors in the muscle. Does that mean that the muscles themselves can keep going indefinitely if you somehow ignore those signals? To find out, Amann and his colleagues injected a nerve block called fentanyl into the spines of volunteers, preventing signals from traveling up from the leg muscles to the brain, and asked them to ride 5K as hard as they could on a stationary bike.
The results were dramatic. When the first subject finished and tried to step off the bike, he nearly collapsed on the floor before Amann and his researchers caught him. All subsequent subjects had to be helped off the bike. Some couldn’t unclip their feet from the pedals, Amann recalls, “and not a single one was able to walk.” They had all been given a gift that many athletes dream of—the ability to push as hard as they wanted without feeling much pain or fatigue—and now they were paying the price, with muscles that had essentially ceased to function.
Yet despite their temporary superhuman status, the subjects didn’t ride faster than when they received a placebo injection. “They always feel great initially,” says Gregory Blain, Ph.D., one of Amann’s colleagues. “They’re flying. But”—he flashes a wicked grin—”we know they’re going to crash.” By the halfway mark, the cyclists still felt great, but they started to look puzzled, because their legs were no longer responding to the commands sent by their brains. Whatever advantage they gained from their fast start soon dissipated as their legs stopped responding.
In this case, the fatigue really is in the muscles rather than the brain. Without any warning signals in the brain, metabolites such as protons and phosphate ions accumulate far beyond levels that directly interfere with the ability of the muscle fibers to contract. In other words, the fatigue produced by metabolites isn’t “all in your head”—instead, you experience a mix of “central” (in the brain) and “peripheral” (in the muscles) fatigue during hard runs. Push too hard at the start of a race, and you’ll discover just how real those peripheral limits are.
“I give up!”
Cause: Effort overload
Occurrence: Anytime you’re pushing your limits Antidote: Train your brain.
Kirsten Ulve
It hurts too much. That’s the simplest way to explain why you don’t push a little harder during those crucial final miles. But it’s not quite right. Pain—the feeling that makes you go “ouch!”—isn’t what holds you back. When researchers at Great Britain’s University of Kent ran electric current through the brains of volunteers to dull their sense of pain, using a technique called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), it didn’t improve how subjects felt during exercise or how they performed in a ride to exhaustion on a stationary bike.
What matters, according to exercise physiologist Samuele Marcora, Ph.D., one of the authors of the Kent study, is effort: the struggle to continue against a mounting desire to stop. All the other forms of fatigue—oxygen deficits, metabolite accumulation, overheating, dehydration, muscle damage, fuel depletion, and so on—contribute to your overall sense of how hard it would be to maintain your pace or speed. Effort, in other words, combines all the different fatigue signals that emanate from every corner of your body—and the moment of truth in any race corresponds to maximum effort.
Runners spend most of their training time trying to make their muscles, heart, and lungs stronger and more efficient. But Marcora’s theory suggests that altering your subjective sense of effort is another way to run faster. Studies have successfully altered effort—and endurance—using techniques such as subliminal messages (smiling faces flashed for a fraction of a second), electric brain stimulation (with electrodes positioned to alter perceived effort instead of pain), motivational self-talk (Feeling good!), and “brain endurance training” (computerized tasks completed while exercising on a stationary bike).
The big question, though, remains unanswered: What is effort, exactly? Is it a psychological state? Is it the tactile sensation of your muscles contracting? Or is it, as Marcora believes, our overall sense of how hard it is to maintain race pace? We’ve learned a lot about what happens in the body when we run, and come up with explanations for many of the sensations we feel and limits we encounter. The next great training leaps will come from understanding the brain.
Tips To Run Faster
Running is all about speed. Some people spend every spare moment they can on a running track. Others set a target of running five or more kilometers a day. Then there are people who simply like to run everywhere. Whatever the reasons for running, one thing many runners have in common is increasing speed. They often have a speed goal they are trying to beat and often it is simply pushing past their own personal best time.
You may consider yourself a decent runner. Perhaps you’re even an impressive sprinter. But can you achieve faster speeds? With a little hard work and determination, you can increase your speed and run faster than you ever thought possible. With these essential tips, you’ll reach your speed goals even faster.
Practice Your Technique
Running is a lot more than just getting outdoors and hitting the pavement. That may work for recreational runners, but serious and competitive runners need a bit of an edge. This can be achieved by practicing a good running technique. The correct technique involves a number of factors, including posture, gait and breathing correctly. You should look tall and lean when you run. This is where good posture comes in. You then need to look at your gait. Look at the way your foot hits the ground when you run. Find the most natural and comfortable one for you and try and lengthen your stride for part of your run, then try quicker, shorter steps as well. Breathing is also of crucial importance. Try to keep your breathing deep and steady, but also look at alternating to short and shallow breathing as well. As a runner, you’ll face different challenges so it’s good to practice different techniques so you can adjust as needed.
Go For A Swim
Swimming is a fantastic way to get into shape and stay in shape. It is comfortable and no impact, making it a perfect workout in-between days when you put your body through its paces. One of the other major benefits of swimming is that it is a great way to incorporate the breathing techniques required for running. Swimming is a great way to get your lungs working and when you can get your lungs to work at a good capacity, you’ll also be able to learn how to breathe correctly when you engage in running at any speed. So get your swimming trunks and swimming goggles and start your swimming sessions.
Get On The Treadmill
You may be thinking about the usefulness of a treadmill when you are running outdoors every day. Believe it or not, there is a practicality to getting on the treadmill. First and foremost, you can program the treadmill to measure your steps, distance, heart rate and the time you actually run. Secondly, a treadmill can be adjusted to increase or decrease your desired speed and you can also adjust the resistance of the treadmill to emulate running uphill or downhill. This means you have the ability to challenge your legs and alternate your workouts so you don’t get used to the same pace. The other big advantage is that the treadmill means you will never have to miss a run due to adverse weather conditions.
Lose Some Weight
Imagine yourself carrying a heavy bag while you try to walk or run. It may seem easy at first, but after a while, that extra weight will slow you down. The same applies to your body weight. Those extra pounds may not seem like a burden at first, but if you’ve ever been overweight, you’ll know that excess weight will eventually slow you down or, at the very least, make it difficult for you to run. Losing some of that excess weight will make all the difference in helping you run faster, and bring with it many health benefits. You’ll also take a whole lot of strain off of your feet as you will be minimizing the impact of a heavier frame constantly hitting the road.
Add Some Weights
While losing excess body weight is advantageous for runners, adding weights when training is also beneficial for increasing speed. Weight training is a great way to improve overall strength. If you don’t have a variety of weights at home you can work with, hit the gym and incorporate them as part of a HIIT (high-intensity interval training) session. You can also strap on some ankle weights when you go for a run to help you strengthen your leg muscles and improve the power in your legs. If you can run well with weights strapped to your ankles, you’ll certainly be able to run fast and for longer without them over time. These weights will offer you a little bit of resistance which will go a long way to improve your speed a lot faster than not using them at all. Or you can wear a weighted vest to add some weight.
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Improve Your Diet
As with all types of physical activity and running in particular, you need to give your body the right fuel to work with. Loading up on processed foods and unhealthy carbs will not deliver the right nutrients and, if anything, can slow you down considerably. Running can be punishing on your body so a diet high in lean protein will give your muscles the nutrients they need to stay strong. But protein will also help your body recover from the harsh treatment involved in training. Lots of fruit and vegetables are also great for your general health and will give your body all the essential nutrients needed to stay healthy and maintain an active body. Also, limit the amount of sugar you consume. Small amounts, like you’d get from eating dark chocolate will give you a great energy boost. A lot of sugar may boost your energy levels, but this boost will only be temporary and once you crash, it will be difficult to continue at the pace you’re usually running and training at. Most of your sugar should come from natural sources like fruit and honey.
Strengthen Your Core
Most people only see running as an activity that works the arms and the legs. They often overlook their core muscles which makes them more susceptible to injury. A strong core is crucial at aligning your spine and pelvic muscles which gives runners an overall edge. A strong core also lessens a runner’s vulnerability to injury and helps them to run more efficiently. It’s also worth considering that a strong core promotes good health and fitness in general. Yoga and Pilates are great for strengthening core muscles and are a great workout in between more rigorous ones when your body needs a little bit of a break without completely skipping a day of exercising. There are also some great exercises you can do in the comfort of your living room, and things like a rowing machine are exceptionally good for improving core strength.
Change The Terrain
Running along a long stretch of road for miles on end may seem like great running practice, but it’s not exactly challenging. The same type of run day in, day out is not only boring but after a while, you’ll feel like you’ve hit a rut. You need to challenge your body and continue strengthening your legs. Change the roads you run on. Head for the hills at least once or twice a week. Going uphill will be an enormous challenge for your legs and your running speed in general. Running downhill also gives you the opportunity to let gravity do its thing to let you run at a greater speed naturally. Once you master the incline of one hill, find a different one. These challenges are the best work out for your legs. Stronger legs can achieve greater speeds so find a few roads that take you up varying hills and you’ll not only have the means to improve your running speed, you’ll love the view from the top. Just make sure you have a proper footwear for the hills- like trail running shoes.
Keep Your Clothing Light
Lots of bulky clothing may be tempting, especially in cooler weather, but a full tracksuit limits your movements and adds unnecessary bulk. Running is strenuous and requires lots of freedom so keep your clothing light. In warmer weather, running shorts and a light tank top are ideal. As it gets cooler, you’ll be looking at warmer alternatives, like running jackets, but that doesn’t mean you should go for thick, bulky attire. There are lightweight thermal options you can wear. These pants and tops are form fitting with incredible elasticity which will give you the freedom of movement you need to run the distance at the speeds you are aiming for. Many are also made with thermal technology. They are thin and light, but will still keep you warm, even if you choose to run on a snowy day. The other benefit of such clothing is that they have the ability to wick sweat away from your body, keeping you dry as you run.
Invest In Proper Running Shoes
When you go for a run at your local running track or park, it’s tempting to deck out in stylish running gear, and that includes running shoes. While you should need to forgo on looking good, comfort and support are infinitely more important. In fact, the right running shoes can make, or break you. You need a pair of running shoes that are light, yet still quite sturdy to give you lots of stability as you run. You also need them to be very flexible and breathable. Look for shoes with a little bit of wiggle room for your toes. Your feet will start to swell after a while so that little bit of space for your toes will be your salvation. Also look at seamless running shoes. It may not seem important, but those seams and stitches will start to rub against your feet causing discomfort. Look for shoes that cradle your feet without being too tight. The rubber sole at the bottom should have good cushioning to minimize the effects of constantly impacting on the hard surfaces most runners choose to practice on. If you plan on running in bad weather, make sure you invest in waterproof running shoes or even Gore Tex running shoes.
Find A Good Speed Workout
When you go out for a run you should give yourself a challenge. Spot a landmark like a building or a tree a couple of hundred meters ahead of you and sprint to it as fast as you can. Then you can spot another one and jog to it at a less vigorous pace. Change your pace every so often but you can turn it into a fun game for yourself. This type of speed training is called Fartlek, which is Swedish for “speed play”. Unlike a regulated or scheduled run where you alternate your speed every 5 or 10 minutes or so, this type of speed interval training is a little more spontaneous. This flexibility makes the run a little more interesting and you can implement it anywhere. It works at improving your speed and makes it challenging to run in a unique way. It will also do wonders at improving your endurance and stamina.
Get Enough Sleep
Running puts a lot of exertion on your body and while you may enjoy the challenge and the burn that comes with running, your body needs time to rest so you can do it all again the following day. Many runners like to get up at the crack of dawn to go for a run and that’s fine. The roads and tracks are less crowded and as most people need to work, it’s the ideal time to get in your running practice before you start your workday. If you’re an early riser, make sure you also go to bed at the right time so that you are getting enough sleep. A rested body is always going to perform better than a tired one. When you are fully rested, your body has the energy to do more and you’ll mentally feel more prepared for your run. If you’re too tired, you may lack the motivation to run or you may even find excuses to skip them for a day or two.
Windows 10 is pretty fast out of the box, but you can make it even faster. How? For starters, you can eliminate those “extras” inside of the operating system that make it look great but are not exactly necessary. What’s more, there are many processes designed to make Windows more efficient, but your way of working may not require all of these cumbersome processes. Why not throw those out, too?
In this how-to, we look at all of the ways that you can make Windows 10 run faster on your PC. Follow these nine steps to attain performance nirvana.
How to make Windows 10 run faster in 9 easy steps1. Get your power settings right
Windows 10 automatically runs on a Power Saver Plan. While this may save money on your electricity bill, it does come at the cost of your computer’s performance.
In order to get around this, head to Control Panel, select Hardware and Sound and go into the Power Options. You’ll then be presented with two more options, which are called Balanced and PowerSaver.
However, if you click the down arrow beside Additional Options, you’ll be able to select the High-Performance setting. Sure, this might use up a little more juice, but it’s the first step to getting Windows 10 to run even faster on your PC.
Subscribe to Blog via Email2. Cut out unnecessary programs running in the background
You may not even be aware of this, but when you start Windows 10, a number of programs are opened and run right away. Of course, this operating system practice has been developed to make things easier for users. But, it is often more of an obstruction that can make a computer feel a bit sluggish.
To stop Windows 10 from doing this, you’ll need to enter the Task Manager, which you do by holding down Ctrl+Shift+Escape. The Task Manager will look like this:
As you can see, there is a start-up tab that you can select to reveal all of the processes that run when you start up Windows 10. Find the programs you do not want to start at startup, right-click each one and select disable in order to stop it from draining system resources.
Of course, the more processes you can do without, the faster your copy of Windows 10 will run. From a practical point of view, you can also enableany programs you’d like to have up and running by the time you log on.
3. Say goodbye to the eye candy!
Sure, all of those cute animations make Windows 10 look amazing. Such visual magic, however, comes at a cost, as each shadow and effect takes its toll on overall system performance. In order to cut down on such extravagances and make some tweaks, you’ll have to carry out a couple of simple procedures.
The first is to head the search box and enter the word sysdm.cpl. Doing so conjures up the System Properties list. As can be seen in the image below, you’ll then have a range of options to either keep or get rid of the animations that slow down Windows 10.
Don’t think that things will suddenly turn bleak once you’ve switched off these visual attractions; just be aware that a few of the cute tricks you’ve become used to might not be available anymore!
4. Use the troubleshooter!
Yes, you read that correctly. In an article that promises to make Windows 10 run faster, we’re telling you to ask the operating system a few questions! The reason for this is that Microsoft has developed a more sophisticated help center that can tell you exactly why your computer is running a little slowly.
More precisely, what you’ll need to do is head to the search bar and look up Run Maintenance Tasks.
This will identify all of the surplus shortcuts and data that you don’t use in your day to day activities and get rid of them. Really, it’s a win for you because you’ll get an increased performance at the cost of absolutely nothing.
As you might expect, by cutting out all of the unnecessary processes going on under the hood, Windows 10 will start to run faster immediately.
5. Cut out the adware
While a lot of the techniques on this list identify the ways in which Windows 10 can be directly tweaked to run faster, there are additional processes outside direct control of the OS that cause things to slow down. Adware and bloatware, for example, are like infections that install themselves on your computer and slowly eat away at your performance.
Removing them may sound like a tough task, but it’s actually fantastically easy. All you’ll need to do is search for Windows Defender and run a scan. By using this software that comes with Windows 10, you’ll be able to easily locate and remove any viruses which are eating away at your computer’s performance.
WINDOWS DEFENDER
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6. No more transparency
The Start menu is very pretty, isn’t it? Sorry to be a buzzkill, but these impressive aesthetics also drain the performance of Windows 10. To get around this, go into Settings and head to Personalization > Colors.
From there, toggle off the item labeled “Make Start, taskbar, and action center transparent.” You’ll notice a small but worthwhile increase in the performance of Windows 10.
7. Ask Windows to be quiet
In an effort to make your experience more enjoyable, Windows 10 is full of hints and tips to guide you through its processes. While this might occasionally help you find the solution to a problem, it is yet another small drain on your computer’s performance.
To minimize the drain a little further, head back to Settings > System, and toggle off the switch labeled “Get tips, tricks, and suggestions as you use Windows.”
8. Run a disk clean-up
A one-size-fits-all solution to all of your Windows 10 speed problems, a disk clean-up will speed up your operating system. At the same time, it will create more space for your data by removing unnecessary files.
As simple as searching for Disk Cleanup in the Start bar, running this procedure will automatically declutter your system and remove any temporary files that are causing problems with performance.
While this isn’t a new feature created for Windows 10, it is still useful. It has a very long history of helping amateurs and professionals alike get the very most out of their operating systems.
9. …and Restart for good measure
Yes, this is the part of the article where we ask you to switch off and back on again. While this might seem like a surprising piece of advice, restarting Windows 10 will completely clear its memory during the shutdown process. This means you’ll restart with a fresh slate and be able to use your PC with its faster and improved performance.
All better now? Tell us how these tips worked for you below in the comments.
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