Running is a passion - 6

In my mind, running is really a race between your heart and body muscles. The heart needs to work harder to feed the muscles, the muscles need to get stronger and efficient to make it easy on the heart.

When we reach the VO2 max (the maximum capacity of our body to use the oxygen and can process no more), it is difficult to run much longer. As we train, we are increasing our VO2 - the volume of oxygen we can consume and transport to the muscles. When I feel like I reached my VO2 max (out of breath), I will take real deep breaths and will count them (every time I exhale). This helps me not only to take deep breaths but more importantly at constant/regular intervals. So when I get to the point where I can go no more, I will start counting and will set the target to 500. This will easily give me an extra mile which would not be possible if I was not counting (in other words focused). Give this a try, maybe set the target to 100 to begin with, that's almost two minutes. Beleive me, it works wonders for me!

The other thing you can do is listen to fast beat songs, this will help you run faster. When you get tired in the middle of the song, don't give up, tell yourself that you will not quit (or slow down) until the end of the song. These are simple mind games I play to improve my speed and pace.