How Fast Can You Get Faster? The Truth About Speed Gains

It’s the question at the forefront of almost all athletes’ minds: “When will I be faster?”

The truthful answer is nuanced and somewhat complicated.  Therefore, it’s probably not the answer that most athletes want to hear.  That being said, understanding what sets the stage for speed gains and what it takes to achieve them is an important part of actually getting faster.

Read this Article: 

https://www.fullcircleendurance.com/blog/how-fast-can-you-get-faster-the-truth-about-speed-gains 

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Reach out to Coach Laura Henry: Hello@FullCircleEndurance.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening
• 0:16 "When will I be faster?"
• 3:08 Speed is Not the Only Measure of Progress
• 5:42 The Fundamentals of Getting Faster
• 11:43 Other Necessary Adaptations to Get Faster
• 15:49 So How Long Does it Actually Take to Get Faster?
• 19:17 The Bottom Line
• 20:19 Closing

Transcript

(0:04 - 0:19)
Hello, and welcome to the Full Circle Podcast, your source for insights into the science and art of endurance sports training and racing. I'm your host, Coach Laura Henry. Today is Coach Tip Tuesday.

(0:20 - 0:45)
When will I be faster? It's the question that is at the forefront of almost all endurance athletes' minds. I know this because it's one of the most common questions that athletes who I coach ask me. Even if athletes don't outwardly have a time-based or pace-based goal, they are usually harboring at least a little bit, maybe a lot of it, of a secret goal that relates to their pace and their speed.

(0:46 - 1:12)
While this certainly is a natural part of being an athlete, because doing athletic things at its core involves wanting to see evidence of tangible progress, this focus on speed gains has become more prevalent in the last couple of decades since wearable technologies have surged into the consumer market. More than literally ever before, athletes can track almost every single element of their training. And this tracking is actually not just isolated to training.

(1:12 - 1:38)
The wearable devices that are on the market and that are being used by athletes today can also track a seemingly infinite number of daily activities. Somewhat concerningly, it's no longer enough just to do a thing. There is an increasing obsession with data tracking, so much so that in order for something that involves moving one's body to quote-unquote count as having been done, it must be recorded on a device.

(1:38 - 1:55)
As an example of this mindset and this behavior, I have worked with athletes who have tracked and recorded the following on their wearable devices. Walks. Even as short as less than five minutes as part of moving through their day, such as walking from the parking lot to a place or from gate to gate in an airport.

(1:55 - 1:58)
Snowblowing. Lawn mowing. Yard work.

(1:58 - 2:07)
Household chores, such as house cleaning or improvement projects. Medical appointments that involve physically moving, such as occupational therapy or physical therapy. Bike fits.

(2:08 - 2:40)
Yes, it's safe to say that we, culturally, as a community of athletes have become obsessed with data. Some athletes are more data obsessed than others, but an increasingly high percentage of endurance athletes are seeking and needing the validation that comes from seeing something tangible in the form of numbers, such as completed hours, completed distances, or recorded heart rates, in order to feel like what they do throughout their days counts. Thus, in essence, an increasing number of athletes are needing this data to feel like living their lives counts.

(2:41 - 2:52)
To be clear, if you resemble any of these observations, it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just a thing that you're doing. And to be fair, you may not even be fully realizing that you are doing it.

(2:52 - 3:08)
I've observed how this hyper-focus on recording data sometimes slowly creeps up on athletes over time. I'm pointing it out because it's incredibly important to be aware of what you're doing and why you're doing it. And too often, we're doing things without knowing why.

(3:09 - 3:27)
In a world that is increasingly obsessed with measuring things, it makes complete sense that athletes would be wanting to see progress in those measured metrics. They want evidence that the time and effort that they are putting into something is worth it. And seeing progress can make us feel like the time, effort, and energy we put into something is worth it.

(3:27 - 3:51)
One of the most tangible and therefore easiest things to want to see progress in is speed. That fact combined with the fact that speed is how athletes are measured against each other in races, snowballs to create a situation where speed and or pace is the metric and the element of training that athletes become fixated on. But as I tell athletes all the time, speed is not the only measure of progress.

(3:51 - 4:16)
In fact, I would make the case that speed is a very limited lens through which to view your endurance sports training. An athlete who I coach recently told me in January that they have seen zero improvement emphasis there was theirs when they communicated to me in their running since September, 2024. I gently and respectfully, I hope disagreed with this athlete's self-assessment of their performance.

(4:16 - 4:42)
From September, 2024 to January, 2025, the athlete had progressed to be able to run three minutes longer at a time as part of their run walk strategy when running, which is 60% longer than they were able to run at a time in September. They were also able to build to add more than 50% total overall duration to their runs. They were able to do all of this without sustaining an injury or causing a recurrence of any of their past injuries.

(4:43 - 5:11)
While this athlete was correct that their running pace is the same and they are not faster than they were in September, 2024, the fact that they were using pace as their only gauge of progress in the running was exceptionally limiting. The truth of the matter is that they saw significant, significant improvement in their running over a four month period of time. They just weren't looking at the right aspects of their running to see and appreciate that progress.

(5:12 - 5:42)
While I pointed this out to the athlete, I also reminded them of the truth that it is quite difficult, if not impossible, to improve both endurance and speed concurrently. In the interest of building this particular athlete's endurance and overall durability and resilience, which need to come first before speed gains, we did not focus on attempting to improve the athlete's speed. Instead, we focused on the important fundamentals, staying healthy, AKA not getting injured, and building overall endurance.

(5:43 - 5:52)
An athlete must be healthy and injury-free in order to see speed gains in their training. The reason for this is simple. If you're injured, you cannot train.

(5:52 - 6:05)
Period. Full stop. In order to stay healthy, athletes must respect their current training capacity by planning training loads, both in terms of volume and intensity that are appropriate for them at any given point in time.

(6:05 - 6:30)
In other words, they must acknowledge and start and train where they are if they want to actually ultimately arrive at where they want to go. Any athlete who attempts to improve their speed, AKA who attempts to go faster, without respecting these fundamentals has a very high probability of getting injured. All injuries are a result of mismanaging load versus capacity.

(6:30 - 6:47)
In my experience, athletes mismanage load versus capacity by doing too much, too soon. They are doing too much volume, too much intensity, or too much volume and intensity for what their current capacity is. It's important to remember what training actually is.

(6:47 - 7:17)
Training is imposing a stimulus in the form of workouts on the body with the intention of causing specific adaptations, such as increases in strength, endurance, and or speed, to occur within the body. If you are not that active, and then you start training, AKA if you're a new athlete, you will see relatively rapid increases in both your endurance and your speed at the beginning because the training you are doing is a completely novel stimulus for your body. Thus, the body adapts relatively quickly across multiple systems.

(7:17 - 7:41)
And you see the very clear evidence of that when you are able to go a little bit longer and a little bit faster than you were able to before. However, these dual progressions in endurance and speed are relatively short-lived. And assuming that you remain consistent in your training over the course of an entire year, last only a year or two at most, because the law of diminishing returns comes into play once you are beyond the initial new stage of training.

(7:41 - 8:17)
If you have been active in training for a while, AKA more than a few weeks or a few months, and you decide that you want to train for something different and or longer than what you have recently been training for, such as a half marathon or a 70.3 distance triathlon, you need to build an endurance base in order to prepare yourself for the specificity of what this type of goal requires. Building an endurance base requires you to forgo any expectations of significant speed gains for as long as it takes to build said endurance base. Establishing this endurance base takes a long time, longer than most athletes expect or want to admit.

(8:17 - 8:42)
How long it takes does differ slightly from athlete to athlete based on the length of the event that they are training for, which impacts how big of an endurance base the athlete needs, an athlete's training history, and an athlete's innate genetic talent. But it's very fair to say that it takes at least 6 to 12 months to establish a true endurance base. For many athletes, it can actually take several years.

(8:42 - 9:00)
Yes, years. While you are building this endurance base, you will not see significantly measurable speed gains because you already had a fitness base when you started training for the new goal event. In this example, the half marathon or the 70.3 distance triathlon, and are therefore subject to the law of diminishing returns.

(9:00 - 9:20)
Establishing an endurance base increases your overall capacity for training. By overall capacity, I mean you increase your capacity to include more volume and or intensity in your training. You can more safely include longer workouts and or more intensity within your workouts when your overall capacity is increased.

(9:20 - 9:47)
Thus, once you establish an endurance base, you can then layer in speed work. You need the endurance base first because you need to be sure you can tolerate the speed load for the durations and or the distances that you want to maintain that speed for. If you try to increase your endurance and your speed at the same time, you will almost certainly impose a load that exceeds your overall capacity, which will increase your probability of injury.

(9:47 - 10:03)
And if you are injured, you will not see any progress in your training, endurance, speed, or otherwise due to the fact that you will not be able to train. In fact, sustaining an injury will cause you to see the opposite of progressions. You will see regressions.

(10:04 - 10:26)
Too many athletes plan training the following way. They pick a race that they want to do, they sign up for it, and they declare that however many weeks are left until the race takes place is the right amount of time for them to train for it. Unfortunately, hate to be the bearer of bad news, the number of weeks left until your goal event may not actually be a sufficient amount of time for you to build an appropriate endurance base.

(10:26 - 11:02)
A healthier and more sustainable way to plan training would be to understand the timeline you will need to build an endurance base based on what your current fitness level and ability is, and then pick a goal race at least at the end of that timeline or further into the future. However, many athletes don't do this because they are impatient and race day would feel too far away for them if they planned things this way. Multiple studies have shown that approximately 65 to 75% of endurance athletes hit the start line of a race either currently injured or having incurred some sort of training-related injury along the way.

(11:02 - 11:24)
This number has held steady for decades despite groundbreaking advances in gear, technology, and medical science. After so many years of working with athletes, my hypothesis about why this number is so high is that while peripheral things such as gear and technology have changed, people generally don't change. Human nature remains the same.

(11:24 - 11:43)
People want what they want in the timelines when they want it. Athletes do too much too soon and try to get faster too fast. They impose too much intensity in their training at a time when they are not sufficiently prepared to handle it, and the load they impose on themselves exceeds their training capacity, causing injury.

(11:43 - 12:04)
All good endurance sports training is planned by balancing an athlete's strengths and an athlete's limiters. Limiters are the factors in training that restrict an athlete's performance or their ability to progress in training. Limiters can be psychological or physiological, but the main limiters that must be considered when seeking to be faster are the physiological limiters.

(12:04 - 12:23)
When you are planning training, you must always ultimately be correctly identifying, respecting, and basing your training on your limiters. This means that you must plan all of your training based on your weakest link in your body. There are a lot of adaptations that occur in the body as a result of endurance sports training.

(12:23 - 12:52)
Blood plasma adaptations, mitochondria adaptations, red blood cell adaptations, cardiovascular adaptations, such as within the structure of the heart itself, muscular adaptations, and connective tissue adaptations. Out of all of these, connective tissues adapt the slowest, which means that they are the most common limiter that we must consider when planning training and desiring to get faster. Connective tissues are tissues in the body that connect, support, bind, or separate other tissues or organs.

(12:52 - 13:20)
Tendons, ligaments, and fascia are all examples of connective tissues. Tendons connect muscles to bones, ligaments connect bones to bones, and fascia is a casing that surrounds and holds every organ, blood vessel, bone, nerve fiber, and muscle in place. In other words, connective tissues are prolific throughout your entire body and are the structures that bind literally everything in your body together.

(13:20 - 13:45)
Their significance in how your body works cannot be overstated. Very importantly in the context of this conversation, connective tissues do not have direct blood sources and they take longer than other body systems to adapt to stimulus imposed on them. Connective tissue adaptations are probably the most undervalued and overlooked adaptations that are necessary to support training-related goals.

(13:46 - 14:07)
Connective tissues need to be strong so they can handle the velocity of increased speed relative to what you were doing and were able to do before. Adequate connective tissue strength is necessary for all other strength and training-related adaptations to be able to occur. But most athletes, and especially self-coached athletes, haven't ever even heard of connective tissues.

(14:07 - 14:28)
Even if they have heard of them, connective tissue strength is not something that most athletes value on their own. That being said, not allowing sufficient time for connective tissue strength development is the source of a high percentage of injuries among endurance athletes. If connective tissues can't handle the velocity or stimulus that is being imposed on them, they break.

(14:28 - 14:40)
And if they break, you do not get faster. Just think about it. Tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, tendon ruptures, and MCL-ACL tears are all connective tissue injuries.

(14:40 - 14:53)
And they're all super common. My experience has been that these injuries can almost always be traced back to athletes doing too much too soon. They progress their training at a faster rate than their connective tissues can adapt, strengthen, and develop.

(14:54 - 15:19)
When the connective tissues are overloaded, overuse and traumatic injuries occur. When we train for endurance sports, connective tissues such as tendons, ligaments, and fascia will be strengthened, but slower than muscles and other body systems will be. Remembering that we always need to plan training based on the biggest limiter that is in play, even if we can do more of something because of one body system, such as our muscular or cardiovascular system.

(15:20 - 15:49)
If another system is limiting us, we must plan to account for that limiter and to stay within the limit that it imposes. For example, your training may feel good and or easy because your cardiorespiratory and muscular systems are adapting at a faster rate than your connective tissues are. Although you may feel like you are stronger and capable of adding more volume and or intensity into your workouts, increasing the load too quickly can place these tissues at risk of injury because they will be lagging behind the other systems in your body that are adapting to your training.

(15:49 - 16:07)
Perhaps frustratingly and infuriatingly to many athletes, the answer to the question how fast can I get faster is the same as it is to practically all questions about endurance sports. It depends. Unfortunately, there isn't an easy answer to this question because there are a lot of nuanced elements that need to be accounted for.

(16:07 - 16:31)
How consistent you are with training, the nature of your goals, the event you are training for, how much you are incorporating other elements such as sleep, nutrition, stretching, etc. And your athletic history will all factor into how long it will take for you to actually see speed gains in your training. Perhaps frustratingly for many athletes, the longer you are an athlete, the harder it is to realize speed gains and the longer it takes.

(16:31 - 16:46)
Professional runner Elliot Kipchoge is a good example of this. After starting to run at the elite level in 2002, he broke the world record in the marathon in 2018 at the Berlin Marathon. The 2018 Berlin Marathon was the 11th marathon he had run in his career.

(16:47 - 17:02)
Four years later, in 2022, he broke the world record in the marathon again. Although he is indisputably one of the best runners in human history, it took Mr. Kipchoge literally decades to see speed gains from his training. Most athletes are not like Mr. Kipchoge when it comes to performance.

(17:03 - 17:24)
In fact, as of the time of this recording, only one human was. Kelvin Kiptum, who broke the world record in the marathon in 2023, and is therefore the only person to ever have run faster than Elliot Kipchoge at the marathon distance. That being said, the principle that was in play for his speed gains is in play for all athletes from the elitist of the elite to the most average of age groupers.

(17:24 - 17:35)
Assuming you are consistent and are putting in the work, it will take months or even years for many of you to see true, sustained speed gains in your training. Yes, months. Yes, years.

(17:35 - 17:51)
And you need to be consistent throughout these periods of time, throughout these entire periods of time. You cannot have bouts of consistency followed by periods of time where you are not doing workouts and or you're not putting in the necessary work to see gains. In essence, you need to consistently be consistent.

(17:52 - 18:18)
Last year, Carolyn Klassen, an athlete I've been coaching for more than five years, achieved her personal best time at the 70.3 distance of triathlon, won her age group, and qualified for the Ironman 70.3 World Championship all in the same race when she raced at Ironman 70.3 Ohio. Prior to hiring me, Carolyn had been a triathlete for more than 10 years. This means that she had been consistently training for more than 15 years when she towed the start line at Ironman 70.3 Ohio in 2024.

(18:19 - 18:42)
It took 15 years for Carolyn to achieve her goal of winning her age group at an Ironman 70.3 race. Her previous personal best time at the 70.3 distance was set in 2021, aka more than two and a half years earlier. In other words, it took more than two and a half years of being consistently consistent for Carolyn to see measurable speed gains again at this distance of triathlon.

(18:43 - 19:04)
The time-based result she achieved at this race was the culmination of years of work. While this may sound depressing, it shouldn't, but it might, the fact that speed gains are so elusive and the fact that they take so long to achieve is exactly what makes them so coveted and so valuable. It's what makes them worth striving for.

(19:04 - 19:17)
It's what drives endurance athletes to set goals that are pace-based and performance-based. The fact that they are hard to achieve is exactly what makes them great. If they were easy to achieve, they wouldn't feel worth striving for.

(19:17 - 19:41)
There are a lot of voices in the endurance space that may try to tell you that it's possible to get fast fast. Many so-called experts, influencers, will tell people what they want to hear, that they have discovered a hack that no one has ever discovered before that will yield people the results they want in the short timelines that they want them in. My experience as both an athlete and as a coach has shown me time and time again that this is not true.

(19:41 - 19:56)
It takes a long time to realize sustained, measurable, actual speed gains. That being said, athletes who are patient with this process and who are willing to put in the work will be greatly rewarded. Paradoxically, you don't get fast fast.

(19:56 - 20:08)
You get fast slowly by slowly. If you are seeking speed gains in your training, aim to stay consistent, to account for your limiters when planning your training, and to be patient. Don't expect speed gains within days or weeks.

(20:09 - 20:24)
Look at the total arc of your training over a longer period of time, such as months or years, to measure your progress. I promise, if you do these things, you will get faster. That was another episode of the Full Circle Podcast.

(20:25 - 20:41)
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(20:42 - 21:04)
As always, we'd love to hear from you and we value your feedback. Please send us an email at podcast at fullcircleendurance.com or visit us at fullcircleendurance.com backslash podcast. To find training plans, see what other coaching services we offer, or to join our community, please visit fullcircleendurance.com. I'm Coach Laura Henry.

(21:04 - 21:05)
Thanks for listening.