Ready to run faster

ounce wrote:

I’ve lost a decent amount of weight in the past few months, so how will this lighter weight result in running faster?

Go put on a 20 pound weight jacket and run a mile. Now take the jacket off, and run another mile. Which one was faster?

It's takes energy to move mass. Less mass means less energy required to move the same distance. When you lose weight (while still maintaining appropriate nutrition) you should be able to 1) run faster, and/or 2) run longer at a given 'pre-weight loss' pace.

My leaning is toward running more in order to improve at the marathon. Run as many miles as your body can tolerate; mostly easy, with a little faster running now and then. Most of us have a lot of room for improvement in our aerobic engine. Running more miles stimulates new capillary production (more blood pathways into the muscles, hence, more oxygen) and greater mitochondria density (the places where oxygen+glucose is converted into ATP, muscle fuel). This is the single best way to improve at the marathon. You make the aerobic engine bigger!

You really don't have to go out and run a lot of intervals or tempo runs. Just increase the overall running volume and do a little faster running. You will impove!

Lighter=Faster, the single most effective way to improve race time.

Note training more and faster may make weight loss difficult, thus the key is to focus on weight loss with not too stressful training level.

Ounce I just want to say first that I think that it is great that you are getting lighter. I feel most important is that by losing this weight it will help you be more health and also stop or prevent certain health issues. So good for you for sticking with it and losing the pounds.

Now as for how will and how can you use it to help with your running. Well here is comes my standard running answer it depends on the person. I know for me as I dropped my weight from 190 pounds down to 160 range my race times got better.

I think the biggest benefit you will get from being lighter is that you will be able to cover more ground without getting as tired. So the to me the important aspect of training would be to still increase your aerobic fitness. Aerobic fitness to me is still the key to running marathons. Although the good thing for you know with being lighter is that I you should be find that running at a certain fast pace should feel easier.

So maybe you start at the fast pace you use to run at and try to stretch that to more miles. Example lets say in the past x:xx pace was your fast pace and you were able to hold that for lets say a mile, with the lighter you maybe now you try to run at that same x:xx pace but make it 1.50 or 2 miles. If you haven't done any fast pace stuff in the past I would think the best place to start would be doing FARTLEK runs. I feel that the fartlek is a great starting point for someone who wants to add faster paces to their workouts.

I must add that even though you are lighter you still will have to work at becoming faster. I would also think that you might want to see if you can try to maximize your pace on your aerobic runs. Lydiard was a big believer that you can get faster and increase your aerobic fitness by running slow miles but though that you can get increase your aerobic fitness in a faster time if you were running at least 1 run a day at your highest aerobic pace, which I believe he felt would fall into the 76%-79% of max HR.

Just wanted to say I'm in pretty much the same position. I've lost a ton of weight and am at a normal weight, but want to get to the "runner's weight" for the same reason you are: I want to run faster. Thanks for posting and I'm enjoying reading all the responses.