How to Run Faster: 7 Beginner-Friendly Methods

The Counterintuitive Truth About Running Faster

If you want to run faster, your instinct says to run fast more often. Push the pace every session, gut it out, get comfortable with being uncomfortable. That instinct is almost entirely wrong — and following it is why so many runners plateau or get injured.

Here’s what actually happens: most of your speed comes from running easy, a lot. The runners who get faster are the ones who spend the large majority of their training at a comfortable pace, then add a small amount of genuinely hard work on top. It sounds backwards, and it’s the single most useful thing a beginner can learn about speed.

This guide covers seven methods, roughly in the order you should add them. Before any of them, though, there’s a prerequisite.

Prerequisite: You Need a Base First

Speed work is a stress multiplier. It asks more of your muscles, your tendons, and your recovery capacity than easy running does. If you don’t yet have a foundation, adding speed is how you get hurt.

The baseline you’re looking for: you can run comfortably for 30 minutes, three times a week, and have been doing so for a couple of months. If you’re not there yet, that’s not a limitation — it’s the current project. Build the base with a Couch to 5K plan or by following how to start running, then come back here.

Method 1: Run More Easy Miles

This is the least exciting method on the list and the most effective. Nearly every serious running program in the world — from high school cross country to Olympic training — is built on the same principle: the vast majority of running volume happens at an easy, conversational pace.

The mechanism is simple. Easy running builds your aerobic system: your heart’s stroke volume, your capillary density, your mitochondria — the machinery that delivers and uses oxygen. That machinery is what determines how fast you can run for any meaningful distance. Speed work sharpens the engine; easy running builds it.

The practical version: if you currently run everything at a moderate “somewhat hard” effort, make two of your three weekly runs noticeably easier. Slow enough to hold a conversation. It will feel like you’re not training. You are.

Method 2: Add One Tempo Run Per Week

A tempo run is a sustained effort at a pace that’s “comfortably hard” — faster than your easy pace, but slower than all-out. You can speak a few words, not a full conversation.

Tempo runs teach your body to clear lactate and to hold a faster pace for longer before fatigue sets in. For a beginner, one tempo run a week is plenty. Here’s a simple structure:

• Warm up: 10 minutes easy running
• Tempo: 15–20 minutes at comfortably hard pace
• Cool down: 10 minutes easy running

Start with 10 minutes of tempo work and build toward 20 over several weeks. Don’t increase the duration and the pace at the same time — pick one.

Method 3: Use Intervals (The Classic Speed Builder)

Intervals mean alternating fast efforts with recovery. They’re the most direct way to improve top-end speed, and they’re also the easiest place to overdo it.

A beginner-friendly interval session:

• Warm up: 10 minutes easy
• Repeat 6 times: 1 minute hard (not a sprint — about 8/10 effort), then 2 minutes easy jog or walk
• Cool down: 10 minutes easy

That’s only 6 minutes of hard running, and it’s enough. The rule with intervals is that the recovery is not optional — the point is to run each hard effort at a quality pace, which means being recovered before you start it. Cutting the recovery short just turns intervals into a mediocre tempo run.

One interval session a week, maximum, when you’re starting. Two is the ceiling for most recreational runners.

Method 4: Include Hills

Hill running is speed training disguised as strength training. Running uphill forces your muscles to produce more force per step, builds leg strength, and improves your running economy — how efficiently you use oxygen at any given pace.

It’s also gentler than flat speed work on your joints, because the hill absorbs much of the impact on the way down (if you walk or jog down slowly).

A simple hill session: find a moderate slope, run up at a hard but controlled effort for 30–45 seconds, walk or jog down easily, and repeat 6–8 times. Warm up and cool down with easy running as usual.

Hill work is a great choice for beginners because the effort is naturally capped by gravity — you can’t accidentally sprint too fast up a hill, and it teaches good posture and knee drive almost automatically. Stop the session if your form breaks down.

Method 5: Improve Your Cadence

Cadence is your step rate, measured in steps per minute. Many beginners run at a low cadence with long, reaching strides — which means their foot lands far in front of their body, creating a braking force with every step.

Increasing your cadence slightly tends to shorten your stride, bring your foot closer to landing under your body, and reduce that braking. The result is less wasted energy and less impact.

Don’t chase a specific number — the old “180 steps per minute” rule is a rough average for elite runners, not a universal target. Instead, try increasing your cadence by about 5% from wherever you naturally are, and see how it feels. A metronome app or a cadence-tracking watch can help you find the rhythm, though you can also just count your steps for 30 seconds and multiply.

Method 6: Get Stronger in the Gym

Running speed isn’t only about your lungs. It’s also about how much force your legs can put into the ground, and how well your muscles and tendons store and return energy. Strength training improves both.

You don’t need a bodybuilder’s routine. Two short sessions a week of basic lower-body and core work is enough to see a difference: squats, lunges, step-ups, hip bridges, calf raises, and planks. Heavy-ish weights, low reps, focusing on good form.

This is where a lot of runners leave performance on the table — they run and run, and never train the strength that would let them run better. If you’re starting from scratch with strength work, our guide to strength training at home covers the basics.

Method 7: Recover Properly (Speed Is Built During Rest)

This is the method people skip, and it’s the one that quietly determines whether the other six work.

Training is the stimulus. Adaptation — the actual getting faster — happens while you recover. Skip sleep, skip rest days, or stack hard sessions back to back, and you’re just accumulating fatigue, not fitness. This is the most common reason beginners plateau despite training hard.

Three things matter most:

• Sleep. Aim for 7–9 hours. It’s the single most powerful recovery tool available, and it’s free.
• Rest days. At least one per week, ideally two when you’re adding speed work. We explain the physiology in why rest days matter.
• Easy days genuinely easy. If your “easy” runs are moderate, you never actually recover. Keep them slow enough to talk.

A useful rule: never stack two hard sessions back to back. Hard days should be separated by easy days or rest.

How to Put It Together

If you’re running three times a week, a simple speed-building week looks like this:

• Day 1: Easy run, conversational pace
• Day 2: Quality session — tempo run, intervals, or hills (rotate weekly)
• Day 3: Easy run, conversational pace

Add two short strength sessions on non-running days if you have room. That’s the whole structure: mostly easy, one quality session, consistent strength work, and real recovery.

If you’re running four or more days, keep it the same shape — one or two quality sessions a week, everything else easy. More hard running is not more speed.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long until I actually get faster?

Expect to notice a difference in four to six weeks of consistent training, with more obvious gains over three months. Speed improvement is real but gradual, and it’s driven by consistency more than by any single session. Runners who train well for a year get dramatically faster; runners who train hard for three weeks get injured.

Should I do speed work if I’m still overweight?

Yes, once you have a base. Speed work isn’t reserved for lean runners. That said, build your easy-running foundation first and add speed gradually — your joints and connective tissue need time to adapt to the higher forces. If you have joint concerns, hills and strength work are gentler entries than flat intervals.

Is it bad to run fast every day?

Yes, for almost everyone. Running hard daily doesn’t give your body the recovery time it needs to adapt, so you accumulate fatigue without getting fitter — and you raise your injury risk substantially. Most of your running should be easy, with a small amount of hard work.

What’s the fastest way to get faster?

Consistency over months, mostly easy running, one quality session a week, strength work twice a week, and enough sleep. There’s no shortcut, and the runners who look for one usually end up injured and back at the start. If you want to know how fast you can realistically progress, the honest answer is that it depends on your base and how well you recover.

The Bottom Line

Getting faster at running is not about running harder. It’s about building a bigger aerobic engine with easy miles, sharpening it with a small amount of quality work, strengthening the legs that produce the force, and then — crucially — letting your body adapt through real recovery.

Run easy most of the time. Add one hard session a week. Lift twice. Sleep. That’s the whole formula, and it’s the same formula that has produced fast runners for decades.