What seemingly small change made the biggest difference in your performance?

Finance Bro wrote:

I'll start: hip mobility work. My stride is much longer now.

The following is for nordic ski racing but have to believe it would not cross over to running; I'm a former competitive runner as well so I do have a background in running.

1) Started taking my sleep hygiene more seriously; number one improvement any athlete can make (if it's lacking) is prioritizing quality sleep.

2) After years of doing my own thing and training alone, joined a training group. Saw HUGE improvement from this.

Simple, not rocket science, but hugely effective.

Definitely working on my technique and in particular cadence. I used to have a candence around 165 in easy runs and even in races it would be 168-170 only. My short distance speed just came from forcing a bigger step length. So I started mobility drills and doing strides only focused on turnover (think quick feet in my head). My average cadence is now 175 on easy runs and in races its above 180 and it has made the biggest difference to running faster. Even my easy pace has dropped quite a bit with zero additional fitness just better technique. Added bonus is that I feel less injury prone since I improved my technique.

People interested in this thread a ones who don't want to do the work needed to run faster. They are interested in "small" changes.

Reality is that big changes are needed for most people to get faster. Run more. Eat better. Sleep more. Drink more water. Run more. Run more. Run more.

Double sided lesson...A) learning to not try to use cross training sessions as workouts and B) learning to respect Rest Days.

Bonus would be to sit down and actually come up with a plan for each week rather than trying to front-load lots of miles and being drained for Thursday workouts and weekend long runs.

for me: running mileage in singles - saw 45 second improvements over 8k, 30 in the 5k, and 8 second 1500 PR. Went from running ~75 miles/week with 3-4 doubles, to doing 75miles/week with no doubles. Personally just felt way more fit and way more strong.

The first time I drank coffee before a race. I never used to think to do it because coffee would make my heart beat fast and I kind of thought that was bad for racing

It was an indoor track race in college, the 5K, and I drank a Starbucks and I think I PR by about 20 seconds

This kid on our team who was all American in NCAA division 2 recommended coffee to us before a race

I don't know what to make of all that breathing technique stuff, but I did make one breathing adjustment that immediately and markedly improved my tempos and other paces, and I had a bunch of pr's that came from it. I was getting cramps in hard tempo efforts and races, so I did a letsrun search about cramps and discovered that many are actually the diaphragm tightening up, and that can be avoided by occasionally taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly, maybe a three count. Just a few times of doing that in workouts and all of a sudden, the cramps went away and I was running markedly faster, down to 5:12 pace avg for a 4 mile tempo and close to my 5000m pr over the last 5k of the workout.

What helped you sleep better? I've read the cool room idea, like Tom Brady does it. I can't even get to sleep if I'm cold, nor if I'm hot.

The last several months I went at after missing nearly a year before (life just threw some stuff at me so I had to take time off), it was learning how to recover...like eating well, drinking well, doing a few post-run yoga poses or resistance bands stuff, right protein/BCAA mix, compression sleeves if I couldn't get to a whirlpool or massage. Those are all separate things, but I lump them under "recovery practices". Just giving my body a tool to work with. The last 4-5months I went after it practicing those simple little things I ran better than all my high school/college days. And I'll add sleep, which a previous poster mentioned. Very important!

I second the "neck up adjustment." That was more impactful for me than any training change I ever made. A little confidence can go a long way.

xczvzxcv wrote:

What helped you sleep better? I've read the cool room idea, like Tom Brady does it. I can't even get to sleep if I'm cold, nor if I'm hot.

#1 thing for me was going nowhere near my phone for at least 2 hours before bed, and unless I knew I was going to need to contact someone I often turned it off after work and didn't go near it again until the next day. Scrolling through social media, or spending a ton of time on forums such as LRC produces a lot of dopamine.. very satisfying to our monkey brains, but an absolute enemy of melatonin production (not to mention super-stressful if you frequent political forums..). Deep breathing exercises (see Wim Hof), and some guided meditation. The quality of my recovery and hence of my workouts (especially intensity) was dramatically enhanced. YMMV but that's mostly what did it for me.

liquid iron 3x week

Slimmed down. It's an aspect of performance that is tiptoed around now because it can lead to eating disorders/ unhealthy habits and mental health issues. But, as long as its coming from the athlete (i.e. not coach forcing athlete to lose weight) and done in a healthy way it makes a bigger difference than people realize. Cut out desserts and never overate led to me dropping ~7 pounds from the start of cross to the end this fall. Was a lot faster at that point than in early september (obviously also due to the training itself, but I also improved much more than my teammates on the same training plan). It won't make you fast - the training does that - but it lets you run your fastest. Nick Willis had a twitter thread about it over the summer, he also has a race weight that he stays at only for 4 weeks a year.

Note: make sure to still get calories in post-workout though to recover and not get injured.

I added more recovery. In my youth the belief was hard/easy days. From 17-22 I had steady progress. At 23 I went to Hard/easy/easy days & my PR's exploded.

Cut out High Fructose Corn Syrup and other forms of sugary poison.

Train to run and race on "Pure Hate."

bonus tip: Stay off the interweb as much as possible and adopt a Neo-Luddism lifestyle

I do exactly this too and get the same benefits. It really works.

Should've quoted the post.

Low-offset shoes.

For years, I ran in Brooks Adrenaline, sometimes with orthotics, at a certain point with a lightweight carbon insert. Over time, after developing Morton's neuroma, I discovered that I needed extra wide shoes. So I was aware of basic variables. But something was missing.

I had noticed that when I ran in my old Asics racing flats, I just felt powerful--my stride felt powerful--in a different way.

In the fall of 2018 I visited Boston and thought I'd pick up some new shoes. I went to Marathon Sports, I believe, on Boylston St., near the marathon finishing line. The young woman there listened to me talk about what I was looking for, and she put me in a pair of Saucony Kinvara 9's. She talked a lot about offset, and about how she suspected I needed a low-offset shoe.

They felt right from the beginning, although they also required some adaptation. I'd spent quite a bit of time thinking about form through the years, so my stride rate was fairly high (175) and I didn't overstride. But the low offset transformed me decisively into a midfoot runner.

Trying to understand why I felt so much better in these shoes, I did some more research on running shoe review websites that carried offset measurements and realized that the Brooks I'd been wearing all those years had 10-12 cm offset, which, especially in combination with orthotics, had almost forced me to heel-strike to some extent, although I'd done my level best NOT to heel strike.

By contrast, the Kinvaras were 4 cm of offset--aka "heel drop."

https://www.runningshoesguru.com/2020/03/saucony-kinvara-11-review/

That one shift paid huge dividends. Before my back forced me to stop racing, I had one amazing final season of optimal training and excellent racing. It felt as though, with this one seemingly trivial change, I had finally claimed my best stride. In proprioceptive terms, my body said, "This!" It was the magic variable that it hadn't occurred to me to think about all those years. That young woman changed my life.

Are you describing your experience at Drake Relays, 1981? If so, you remember somethings I don't. I recall Steve Scott winning one mile. I don't remember his time. 3:55 seems a faster than I recall. I remember Steve Spivey racing a lot that weekend and racing well.