Why Short, Sharp Efforts Build Speed

Most of us in the Highlands run at one comfortable pace. It gets us round the loch, up the glen and back before the light goes, and there is nothing wrong with it. But if you want to run that same route quicker — or feel stronger on the climbs — you need to spend a little time each week running faster than comfortable. Intervals do exactly that, in controlled doses.

The principle is simple. Running hard for a short burst stresses your heart, lungs and leg muscles in a way that steady running cannot, and then a slow recovery jog lets you do it again without falling apart. Over a few weeks, your body adapts: you cover the same ground with less effort, and your easy pace quietly creeps up. The key word is short. One session a week is plenty, and it should never leave you ruined for the rest of your running.

Warm Up Like You Mean It

In a Highland winter, a cold muscle is a grumpy muscle. Cold, damp air and a stiff easterly make it far harder to run fast safely, so treat the warm-up as part of the session rather than an optional extra. Ten to fifteen minutes of easy jogging first, until you are genuinely warm and breathing a little deeper than usual.

Then spend five minutes on simple dynamic drills, on a bit of flat, soft ground:

• Leg swings, front to back and side to side, holding a fence post or gate for balance.
• Walking lunges, ten to fifteen steps each leg.
• High knees and heel flicks, twenty metres each.
• Three or four strides — building to about 85 per cent of flat-out pace over twenty seconds, then walking back.

Strides are the secret weapon here. They remind your legs what fast feels like before the real work begins, and they are the single best bridge between jogging and sprinting.

The Basic Shape of a Session

Every interval session follows the same rhythm: hard effort, easy recovery jog, repeat, then stop while you still have something left. The effort should feel controlled and strong, not desperate. If you cannot speak a short sentence at the end of a rep, you have gone too hard.

Some reliable formats to try:

• Six to eight reps of 1 minute hard, 90 seconds easy jog. The ideal starting point. Do it on a flat forest track or quiet road.
• Five reps of 3 minutes hard, 2 minutes easy. A step up, and brilliant for building the stamina to hold a faster pace on longer runs.
• Eight to ten reps of 45 seconds hard, 75 seconds easy. Great when time is short or the weather is grim.
• Hill reps: six to ten efforts of 45 to 60 seconds up a steady gradient, jogging back down as recovery. Perfect for the terrain we have on our doorstep.

Keep the recoveries as jogs, not walks. They clear the legs and keep your heart rate from dropping so far that the next rep feels like a cold start.

Finding Your Interval Ground

You do not need a track. In fact, most of the best interval venues around here are not tracks at all. Look for a stretch where you can run for a few minutes without dodging traffic, gates or deep bog.

Forest tracks and estate roads are ideal — usually gently rolling, forgiving underfoot and quiet. Canal and riverside paths give you a flat, measurable stretch, useful when you want to compare sessions week to week. Old military roads offer long, steady gradients if you fancy a sustained effort rather than short repeats. On a calm evening, a beach at low tide is about as good as interval training gets: firm, flat and wonderfully easy on the joints. Local sports fields and playing parks work fine too, especially in winter when the trails are thigh-deep in mud and the light is failing by half three.

Whatever you choose, note roughly where each rep starts and finishes. Consistency of route makes it much easier to see progress.

Adapting for All Abilities

Intervals scale beautifully, which is why they suit everyone from a brand new runner to someone chasing a personal best.

• New to running or returning from a break: four reps of 30 seconds hard, 2 minutes walking or very easy jogging. That is a complete session. Build to six reps over a month.
• Running regularly for a few months: the six-to-eight by one minute session above, once a week, with two or three easy runs alongside it.
• Chasing a faster time: five by 3 minutes, or ten by 1 minute with shorter recoveries, plus a longer hill session every third week.

Whatever your level, aim to finish the last rep feeling you could have managed one more. That is the sign you have trained rather than emptied the tank.

Cool Down and Let It Settle

Finish with ten minutes of easy jogging, ideally on soft ground, letting your breathing come back to normal. A few gentle stretches afterwards are fine if you enjoy them, but the jog itself matters more. Get warm and dry reasonably quickly, especially in a Highland wind, and eat something with a bit of protein and carbohydrate within the hour.

Then leave it alone. Give yourself at least 48 hours before another hard effort, and keep the runs in between genuinely easy. One well-executed interval session a week, repeated patiently through the seasons, will do more for your pace than three sloppy ones ever will. Pick a route, pick a format, and give it a fortnight before you judge it. The speed will come.