Running Faster

To add:

http://www.kemibe.com/training.htm

There's the secret to running faster.  Plain and simple. 

Your cadence is fine.  In fact, I wouldn't worry about it at all (I STILL don't get why this is such a big deal, but another topic for another day).

What are your goals?  Running speed in triathlons, or stand-alone races?  I would train differently for each.  Common theme between them would be to run more often. 

Add another run to your week if you can.  Ideally, your long run should be more like 25-30% of your weekly volume--not 50-60%. 

Once you've done that (or if you can't for some reason), then add some tempo.  If you're prepping for your HIM, I'd suggest doing it at the end of your long run.  Start at 10' and build each week.  You can break it into intervals too (e.g., 10' tempo, 2' easy, 10' tempo for 20' total).

Other than strides (you can do them weekly as part of one of your shorter runs), you can largely ignore most of the traditional "speed" work until much closer to your A-race.  And for your first HIM, you can pretty safely ignore it altogether.  You need more endurance, not speed.

Some of the better discussion I've seen on running is here.

Wow, so many great reponses! Thank you all!

Thanks for the links on cadence and "the secret". I really enjoyed that article on Kevin Beck's site. It meshes with exactly what everyone else is saying, which is 'run more.'

I agree with a lot of the points made and reading through the responses it has helped me to clarify what it is I was looking for. I think I'm after two things. 1) In the immediate future, I'm looking to increase my speed for my next half marathon, which is in May. 2) I'm looking to increase my running speed overall so that it will benefit my HIM.

Looking at #1 I now see that increasing my speed in a bit over a month is pretty impossible. I mean, by running more I may be able to improve my pace a bit but really, let's just scrap that idea all together.

In regards to my HIM which I will focus on after the May HM, great advice on the focus on cycling. A bit of background, last year I was doing 120km rides week after week (and for a week, day after day) as my long ride. Mind you, I haven't riden that long since September of '06 so I will need to build back up but at least I know that I can do it and what it feels like. And now that the weather is getting better I will definitely get back out there and start working on that. I have a group of triathletes that I will be riding with and we are planning on adding bricks to our training rides so I'm sure that will help as well.

Incorporating 4x or 5x runs per week is tough from a time availability perspective. Instead, what if I lengthen another one of my runs for a month and if that goes well, lengthening my 3rd run of the week as well? In this way I'll have 3 long runs of about 1:30. I'm not sure what that means in terms of impacting run workouts like temp runs, strides, etc. I guess I could incoporate them into my long runs.

The knowledge on BT continues to amaze. Thanks again everyone!

oh my oh my, some good advice and unfortunately some not so good. Before making any changes to your current plan listen to Scout or JohnnyKay about running more.

I have't read the whole thing in detail (although I did notice the not so good posts ) so I apologize if you already posted this, but when is your race? what's you avg weekly running volume for the past 3-6 months? is running your limiter? Do you currently do any goal pace runs? do you have any recent results for like a 10K, 1/2 mary?

Another vote for Yasso 800s