How to Actually Get Faster at Running

Why Running Harder All the Time Isn’t the Answer

Want to improve your 5K or 10K time? The answer probably isn’t simply trying to run faster every time you go out.

In this week’s Consistency Club Guided Run, Adam breaks down what actually makes you a faster runner — from easy mileage and interval training to strength, fuelling, recovery and learning how to pace yourself properly.

Whether you’re chasing sub-40, sub-30, sub-25 or just want to feel stronger at your current pace, the same basic principles apply.

In this episode:

🐢 Why running slower can make you faster – Easy running builds the aerobic foundation that allows you to handle and recover from harder work.

🏃‍♂️ Stop testing and start training – Trying to PB every week is the running equivalent of attempting your one-rep max every time you enter the gym.

⏱️ How intervals work – Breaking a target pace into manageable chunks allows you to accumulate time at speeds you can’t yet sustain continuously.

🔥 Threshold running – What “comfortably hard” actually means and why it helps you sustain quicker paces for longer.

🏋️ Strength training for runners – Stronger calves, quads, hamstrings, glutes and hips can improve resilience, power and running economy.

🚗 Running economy – Two runners can have similar aerobic fitness but use different amounts of energy to maintain the same pace.

🍌 Fuel the work – If you want your body to perform during harder sessions, you need to give it the fuel to do so. Carbohydrates aren’t the enemy!

😴 Recovery creates the adaptation – Training provides the stimulus. Your body actually gets stronger and fitter when you give it the opportunity to recover afterwards.

💨 Not every run should be hard – A good training week balances harder sessions with genuinely easy running rather than turning every run into a race.

🎯 Pacing can make you faster immediately – Sometimes fitness isn’t the problem. That ridiculously fast first kilometre is 😂

📈 Why PBs become harder to earn – Beginner improvements can happen quickly, but the fitter you become, the harder those extra seconds are to find.

🔎 Look beyond your PB – Faster easy paces at the same effort, lower heart rate, better recovery and completing stronger sessions can all show you’re improving before a race time does.

The biggest message

Getting faster isn’t about seeing how hard you can run every time you put your trainers on.

It’s about giving each run a purpose.

Easy days build the engine.

Hard sessions teach it to go faster.

Strength makes the body more resilient.

Food provides the fuel.

Recovery allows the adaptations to happen.

And consistency ties everything together.

Do those things for long enough and eventually all that invisible work has a chance to show itself on the clock.

Key takeaway:

If you want to run faster, you don’t need to run every run faster. You need to get better at knowing when to run fast — and when not to.

The Fitness Bank Account

Why the Boring Weeks Are the Ones That Change You

Why is it that some people seem to stay fit for years, while others repeatedly go through the cycle of starting, stopping and starting again?

It usually isn’t because they’re more motivated.

In this week’s Consistency Club Guided Run, Adam talks about the thing this entire community is built around:

Consistency.

And importantly, consistency doesn’t mean being perfect.

Using the idea of a fitness bank account, we look at how every run, walk, strength session, decent meal and sensible recovery decision is another small deposit — and why those seemingly insignificant deposits can eventually add up to something massive.

In this episode:

💰 The Fitness Bank Account – Why individual workouts rarely transform you, but hundreds of small deposits eventually can.

🏃 Consistency beats intensity – Why three sensible sessions every week can achieve far more than smashing yourself for a month and then stopping.

🛰️ Recalculate, don’t quit – Missed a run? Had a bad week? Been on holiday? Treat it like missing a turn on the sat nav. Recalculate and carry on.

🔄 Become brilliant at restarting – You don’t need to become someone who never falls off track. Become someone who doesn’t stay off for very long.

📉 Your minimum viable week – Why doing a smaller version of your normal routine during busy periods can be far better than doing nothing because you can’t do everything.

❌ Don’t make up missed sessions – Training isn’t homework. If you miss Monday’s run, you don’t necessarily need to cram it into Tuesday and throw the rest of the week out.

🌴 Holidays don’t destroy your fitness – Enjoy your holiday. Run if you want to. Don’t if you don’t. The important bit is simply getting back into your routine afterwards.

🔥 Why motivation isn’t enough – Motivation comes and goes. Routines reduce the number of times you have to convince yourself to get started.

🚪 Reduce the friction – Sometimes consistency isn’t about having more willpower. It’s putting your trainers by the door, taking your gym kit to work or making the good choice easier to make.

🧠 Identity – How enough small actions eventually change your language from “I’m trying to run” to “I’m a runner.”

📈 Compound interest for fitness – How one positive habit can make the next one easier, creating momentum that builds over months and years.

🪨 The boring middle – Transformations don’t really happen in the before-and-after photos. They happen during the hundreds of ordinary Tuesdays nobody takes a picture of.

The biggest message

Consistency doesn’t mean:

Never miss a run.

It doesn’t mean:

Never eat a takeaway.

And it definitely doesn’t mean:

Be perfect.

It means keep coming back.

One missed session doesn’t empty your fitness bank account. One bad week doesn’t erase months of work. And a holiday doesn’t send you back to square one.

Make the next deposit and carry on.

Because one fairly average week of training might not look particularly impressive…

But fifty fairly average weeks?

That can completely change somebody.

Key takeaway:

I’d take somebody who’s 80% consistent for five years over somebody who’s 100% consistent for five weeks — every single time.

When Running Feels Harder Than It Should

Why One Bad Run Means Absolutely Nothing

Ever gone out for a run at a pace that normally feels comfortable… only to suddenly feel like you’ve got two bags of cement attached to your legs? 😂

Your breathing feels harder. Your heart rate is higher. Your pace is slower. And within about ten minutes you’ve convinced yourself that you’ve somehow lost all your fitness since Tuesday.

In this week’s Consistency Club Guided Run, Adam talks about why bad runs happen, what might be causing them, and why one difficult session tells you very little about how fit you actually are.

In this episode:

😴 Sleep – Why eight hours in bed doesn’t necessarily mean eight hours of good recovery, and how poor sleep can show up in your running.

🪣 The stress bucket – Your body doesn’t separate running stress from work, family, poor sleep and everything else going on in life. It all goes into the same bucket.

⛽ Fuel & glycogen – Why the exact same pace can suddenly feel much harder when you haven’t fuelled particularly well.

💧 Hydration, heat & weather – How temperature, wind and hydration can completely change the effort required to run your usual pace.

🏋️ Training fatigue – Sometimes your legs feel heavy because your training is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do. Training creates fatigue before recovery creates adaptation.

📈 Why progress isn’t linear – Fitness doesn’t go up in a perfectly straight line. Good weeks, bad weeks, PBs, holidays, illnesses and rubbish runs are all part of the process.

🔍 Look for patterns, not individual numbers – One bad run probably means very little. Several difficult runs alongside poor sleep, elevated resting heart rate, low HRV and persistent fatigue might be worth paying attention to.

🏁 Bad races happen too – Fitness is what you’ve built; race performance is what you manage to express on one particular day. One bad race doesn’t erase months of training.

⌚ Stop analysing everything – Sometimes there isn’t a perfect explanation. You can sleep well, eat well and prepare properly… and still have a crap run 😂

🧠 The experienced-runner mindset – Becoming a better runner isn’t about eliminating bad days. It’s learning not to panic when they happen.

Zoom out

One run is one coin toss.

One match isn’t the season.

One jigsaw piece isn’t the whole picture.

Instead of judging your fitness from what happened today, zoom out.

How has the last month gone? What can you do now that you couldn’t do six months ago? Is there actually a pattern developing, or have you simply had a rubbish Tuesday?

Sometimes there’s something useful to learn from a bad run.

Sometimes there isn’t.

Either way, don’t allow one difficult session to rewrite the story of all the work you’ve already done.

Key takeaway:

Your worst run doesn’t define your fitness any more than your best run does. They’re both individual pages — we’re interested in the whole book. 👊🏃