I have always been a slower runner relative to whomever I am running with. Therefore if I go for a run with someone else the chances are that I will be running with someone that is faster than me. As a result, I have gotten to know firsthand what it feels like to run with someone that is faster than me. Here is how I have been able to cope with that.
The key to running with someone faster than you is to synchronize your training days so that you can run together when your faster partner has a slow recovery run. Alternatively, your partner can chase you down when doing interval training before running together for recovery between intervals.
Let’s take a closer look at how to run with someone who is faster than you in a way that you can both enjoy your run and neither of you feels frustrated with the other.
How To Run With Someone Faster Than You
Running with people faster than me is something that I have done just about my whole life. There are a few things that I have managed to do successfully that has ensured that both my faster running partner and I were able to enjoy our run without feeling frustrated.
My first strategy is running with a partner while they are doing intervals out on the trail. I will keep running along the trail at my normal pace. My partner will run back along the trail for either 1 or 2 minutes before turning around for an all-out effort to chase me down. We do the same for each interval in the set and then run together for the recovery portion between the end of one set and the start of the next.
My next strategy has been very helpful for my faster partner out on the trails. We go for a run together when it is a “slow” recovery run on his training program. It is up to me to set the pace for that recovery run and he must run at my pace. That way he doesn’t slip into his bad habit of running too hard on what is meant to be his recovery day.
What Makes Someone Run Faster Than Someone Else?
There are several factors that make some runners faster. There are factors that we can control such as our fitness in terms of both speed and endurance as well as how conditioned we are for the specific trail. For instance, a runner who lives at 8,000ft will do better on a 10,000ft altitude trail than a runner living at sea level.
What we can’t ignore is that when it comes to running faster, where you are on the scale of the genetic lottery will make a big difference to your running. Factors such as leg length, lung capacity, bone-to-muscle weight ratio, and VO2 max (the amount of Oxygen your body absorbs from each breath) all play a role in making one runner faster/slower than another.
When I competed at high school my date of birth near the end of the year meant that I was running against kids as much as 10 months older than me. That put me at a disadvantage. However, that disadvantage has swung around into an advantage now that I run in the veterans’ categories where I move into a new age group at a younger age than my competitors.
Why Do Some People Run Slow?
There are a number of physiological factors that can cause you to run slower. These are all ones that I have experienced first-hand.
The first on the list is not getting enough quality sleep. This is interesting. In my experience, there seems to be a 24hr delay in how a bad night of sleep will negatively impact how fast or slow I run. If I sleep badly the night before a big event because of pre-race nerves, I will still be able to perform relatively well on race day. However, if I sleep badly 2 nights out from an event, my running always suffers. When it comes to general everyday running, not getting consistently good sleep will make me slower.
Stress is another factor that makes me slower. In a way, it is also connected to how well I sleep. When I’m stressed I usually have a restless night and wake up in the morning feeling more fatigued than I was the night before.
Not taking in sufficient calories slows me down. This is something that I certainly feel at the moment. My current objective is to drop about 10 to 15 lbs of body weight so my portion sizes have reduced while increasing my off-season base mileage. This calorie deficit has slowed me down on nearly every run I do at the moment. The slower pace has helped me stay within my aerobic threshold where it is easier for my body to burn fat as fuel.
Finally, low iron levels affect how much Oxygen your blood can deliver to your muscles. Less iron means less Oxygen and consequently slower running. What I have noticed is that when my iron levels dip my vitamin B12 levels tend to dip as well.
Do You Run Faster With Competition?
Something that I have noticed when I have a friend/rival running in the same event is that it tends to motivate me to run faster than I otherwise would have. It is as if this sense of competition – even friendly competition is an impetus to push a bit harder to try and finish ahead of my friend.
This was confirmed by a research study conducted at New York University. The results of that study showed that if runners competed in a race with at least one of their direct rivals present, they were able to cut an average of 8 seconds per mile off their running pace over the distance of the race.
The study used the kind of shorter distances usually run on the road, so I don’t know how that would translate to an ultramarathon on the trails measuring 50 miles or even 100 miles. Those kinds of distances are long enough that the adrenalin burst that you get from running against a direct rival will wear off.