Quick Guide 9: Strides and Drills

This is the seventh and last run I suggest for each week; any others should be easy recovery runs just to keep mileage up. If you run fewer than seven times per week, that gets covered in the next post.

In a strides run, once or twice each mile you should run 70-130 meters at about mile pace, if you're a distance runner (400-800m pace if you're regularly racing a mile or under). The idea is to be able to change speed and then return to the previous pace. These should not feel very taxing and you should rarely do more than 10 in any workout.

Alternatively, these roughly 100m sections can be used to focus on different aspects of running style, exaggerating some aspect - such as knee lift, back kick, ankle flexion, etc. (there's a ton of resources about these online). Personally, I hate doing these, but they do seem to help; my average pace late in the run is often faster than it was at the start.