Couch to 5K Week 13 tip: Adding speed to your run

By Nick Hurley

Dick Pond

Now that you have been training for more than 12 weeks, you may start to question how fast you should be running.

Throughout the program, the goal has always been to listen to your body and keep a conversational pace.

Since you have improved your fitness, you may want to try some of these ideas to add some speed to your run and push your fitness even further.

Use a set structure

Within your 18-minute run interval you could decide to alternate between running 3 minutes at a harder pace followed by 3 minutes at an easy pace.

You could repeat this 3 times to reach the full 18 minutes of running.

How hard does the running have to be?

You want to run at a pace where you feel you could maintain past the 3-minute mark, but also feel some fatigue at the end.

This would be followed by 3 minutes at an easy pace so you can recover for the next interval.

Essentially, adding some speed into your run is like mimicking the walk/run combos you've used all along, but alternating hard and easy running.

Use landmarks

You may not want to run fast all the time, but still add some speed.

In this case, use landmarks or things around you to create mini-intervals.

Try running hard to the end of the block or to the next stoplight.

Any of these distances can help enhance your run and you don't have to feel like you are always having to look at your watch.

Be spontaneous!