Chasing down the clock on race day is the ultimate motivation for many runners. Every runner aspires to shatter their personal best and be able to effortlessly run faster and harder for longer.

So many of us get caught up each day with various stresses such as work, family, team commitments etc., and we often feel that there aren't enough hours in the week for us to train. Or, even when we do train, we feel lethargic, exhausted and even unmotivated.

Ultimately we struggle to find time to adequately prepare ourselves to achieve our performance goals. However, what if you could train smarter, not harder, and still achieve or maybe even surpass your performance goals? Here are 10 top tips that you can implement in your training to help you maximise your potential and achieve faster finishing times.

Run More Often

This might sound fairly obvious, but running more frequently will help you increase your speed and endurance capacity over time. To monitor this, you should devise a training plan and set an achievable weekly mileage goal.

Structure is key to long term success and adherence; we are creatures of habit after all. So, start with a weekly goal around your current training level, and then increase it progressively as your body adapts and the training load gradually feels less stressful. This will ultimately leave you able to run harder for longer.

Run For The Hills And Improve Your Acceleration

Hill training helps to improve your running economy and efficiency, which will translate into faster running. Hill repeats are a great way to help you move up the gears and develop lightning acceleration. You should only incorporate hill training into your running program once you've built a strong endurance base.

All you need to do is find a hill with a moderate incline that's roughly 100–200 meters long. Run up the hill at a hard effort, ensuring the effort is consistent and without letting your running form fall apart. Turn around and recover by walking or jogging down the hill at a steady pace.

You can repeat this for reps and sets and you can perform and progress on a weekly basis.

Train For Speed

If you don’t run fast, you won’t get faster. Tempo runs, interval runs and fartlek runs are all common variations to traditional steady state running sessions that can be used to develop speed and endurance qualities.

Tempo runs (long intervals) help you develop your anaerobic threshold, which is critical for running faster.

Short interval runs help you to get comfortable shifting your pace and maintaining a faster speed.

Fartleks or speed play are simple quick bursts of speed that vary in distance (unstructured intervals). These speed "pick-ups" are great preparation for mentally being able to handle a pace that is not comfortable for longer periods of time.

Fine Tune Your Running Mechanics

Proper running form can shave valuable seconds or even minutes off your pace or finish time at races. The key to efficient running at any speed is to practice proper technique.

This means keeping your upper body tall yet relaxed, striking the ground with your mid-foot landing under your hip, and swinging your arms forward and back at low 90-degree angles.

Running mechanics drills like high knees, bum kicks, A-skips, B-skips, bounding, straight leg bounding, ankling and cariocas can usually be performed after a warm-up, but before the bulk of the training session roughly twice weekly.

Get Stronger And Build Resilience

Strength training is an often overlooked yet crucial component of any runner’s training preparations and only needs to be performed twice weekly.

Having a strong core, strong glutes, mobile joints and overall body strength will improve your overall athleticism and lead to faster running.

Core strengthening exercises such as crunches, reverse crunches, V-ups, Pallof presses and planks will help you improve your form and posture, which will assist in opening up your lungs for more efficient breathing and faster running.

Moreover, your glutes drive your stride and maintain the power required for speed. So by performing exercises like squats, step ups, bridges, single leg Romainian deadlifts and side lying hip abduction, we can target our glutes and work on making them stronger. This will result in reduced risk of injuries, and you should feel more efficient and powerful when running.

Put A Spring In Your Step

Add plyometric exercises such as squat jumps, broad jumps and pogo jumps (with a skipping rope) into your training - this is a sure fire way to light up your fast twitch muscle fibres responsible for fast and explosive movements.

Exercises like these enhance our bodies ability to store and release elastic energy (we act like a spring), allowing for shorter ground contact times, longer strides and reduced bobbing up and down. This correlates to less energy leakages and allows for more efficient movement and energy expenditure, which will ultimately lead to faster finish times.

Eat, Sleep, Run, Repeat

Don't be under the illusion that running hard every day will make you faster. Rest is critical to your recovery and injury prevention efforts. Our bodies rebuild and repair themselves during these rest days, and it’s essential that runners sufficiently fuel their body on these days (and every other day) to optimise their performance.

Good nutritional habits, such as ensuring adequate protein intake for muscle recovery, carbohydrate intake to fuel workouts, fat intake for joint health and water intake to prevent dehydration, will allow runners to reap the rewards from their training.

Sleep is also a crucial long term recovery strategy, as when we sleep a lot of important things are happening to aid in the recovery process. Studies have even shown that runners who get more shut eye (between 8-10 hours) have quicker reaction times, stronger immune systems and faster finish times.

Cross Train For Performance Gain

Cross training is a powerful tool in your training toolbox and if used wisely, can dramatically improve your running speed and endurance. Runners can strategically cross-train as supplemental exercise on top of their normal workload to boost their fitness level or use it as an active recovery tool to speed up the healing process.

Activities such as pool running or cycling, are as specific to running as you can get without actually running and they’re also impact free (meaning injury rates are drastically lower).

Stretching

Studies have shown that stretching prior to running does not prevent injury or improve performance. Although, warm up activities do prevent injury and improve performance, so time is best spent warming up the muscles rather than stretching before activity.

Stretching before activity actually decreases power, force output, jump performance, and speed. Whilst dynamic warm up activities, utilising the muscles you want to challenge in your work out or competition, will improve your performance.

Try to stretch after your workouts or on your rest and recovery days to improve flexibility and reduce your risk of injury.

Watch Your Step

Lightweight or minimalist running shoes that have greater cushioning, greater longitudinal stiffness and greater comfort were associated with improved running economy. It’s also recommended to replace your running shoes every 300-500 training miles, as they lose their ability to shock absorb which can lead to impaired running mechanics, slower finish times and, worse again, injury!

So there you have it, 10 top tips to guide you on your way to running faster. My advice is to implement each tip one at a time into your training plan, to avoid any risk of injury and overtraining.

Be mindful that it’s also easy to be overwhelmed when initially trying to implement numerous things at once. So take it one step at a time (excuse the pun) and gradually add these into your weekly routine. This will ensure greater longer term adherence, enhanced quality of training and ultimately faster finish times.