Runner development is one of my favorite topics in running — because it answers the question every runner eventually asks: how do I get faster?
This is the most interesting question in running. Not “how do I survive my next race.” Not “what’s a good workout for Tuesday.”
But…how do you structure months and years of training so you keep improving, stay healthy, and actually reach your potential?
To dig into runner development, I invited Sam Alexander onto episode 441 of the Strength Running Podcast (Apple, Spotify). Sam is the head men’s cross country and track & field coach at Connecticut College (my alma mater!) where he recently guided the team to the Division III National Championships for only the second time in program history.
The first time was 2002, when I was a freshman and the third alternate for that National Championship squad, making me the very first person who didn’t get to go on the trip. Not that I’m still upset about it!
Sam’s credentials go well beyond his coaching resume. As a collegian, he was a three-time conference champion — winning the Northeast Conference cross country title in 2011 and the 5,000m and 10,000m titles in 2012. After college, he finished 9th at the 2013 US Cross Country Championships and represented the United States at the Great Edinburgh Cross Country Race in Scotland and the NACAC Cross Country Championships in Trinidad & Tobago.
In other words, Sam has lived athlete development from both sides: as a runner who climbed from good to nationally competitive, and as a coach whose job is to take talented-but-raw 18-year-olds and turn them into championship-caliber athletes.
That’s why I love talking to college coaches. These are the operators, the people in the trenches with athletes every single day in high-stakes, performance-driven environments. And the principles they use to develop college runners apply directly to you, whether you’re training for your first 5k or chasing a Boston qualifying marathon.
Here’s what I took away from our conversation about runner development from the podcast.
Runner Development & College Freshmen
Every fall, Sam inherits a new class of freshmen. And every fall, the same pattern shows up: these athletes arrive with real strengths and predictable gaps.
Most incoming college runners have raced a lot. They have competitive experience, some turnover from years of track racing, and the enthusiasm of athletes who’ve been successful in high school. What they usually don’t have is durability — the structural strength, mileage background, and aerobic depth to handle college-level training.
So the first job isn’t to make them faster. It’s to make them more resilient: gradually increasing mileage, adding strength work, and expanding the aerobic engine so they can absorb harder training later.
This is a critical insight for adult runners, too. The limiting factor for most runners isn’t speed — it’s the capacity to train. If you can’t handle consistent mileage without breaking down, no workout in the world will save you. Runner development starts with building the athlete who can do the training, then doing the training.
Runner Development for Adults New to the Sport
But what if you never ran in college? What if you picked up running at 30 or 45 or 60?
The good news is that the fundamentals of runner development don’t change — only the timeline and the starting point. If you’re newer to the sport, your priorities should look a lot like a college freshman’s first year:
Consistency above all else. Nothing develops a runner like uninterrupted months of training. An unspectacular but consistent year beats a spectacular six weeks followed by a running injury, every single time.
A gradually expanding aerobic base. Easy running is the foundation of the sport. Most of your weekly mileage should feel comfortable and conversational, with mileage (and cross-training volume) increasing patiently over months, not weeks.
Basic strength and athleticism. Runners are athletes first. Strength training, hill work, and strides build the durable, coordinated body that makes every future phase of training possible. This has been the core philosophy at Strength Running since day one, and it’s exactly what the best college programs prioritize.
New runners often want to skip straight to the sexy stuff like track workouts, race-specific sessions, impressive Strava files, and ambitious goal races. But development doesn’t work that way, which brings us to one of the most important ideas from my conversation with Sam.
The “Order of Operations” of Athlete Development
In math, the order of operations tells you which steps come first. Runner development has an order of operations, too — and skipping steps has consequences.
Can a new runner go from the couch to an ultramarathon? Sure, people do it every year. But finishing something isn’t the same as developing as a runner. The couch-to-ultra path usually means shuffling through enormous volume your body isn’t prepared for, racing on a shallow aerobic base, and never developing the speed, economy, and strength that unlock long-term potential.
A better sequence looks something like this:
- Build general fitness and durability (easy running, strength training, strides)
- Develop speed and economy over shorter distances (hill sprints, track work, and middle distance races)
- Extend that speed out to longer races.
There’s a reason college coaches develop runners for the mile, 3k, and 5k before anyone dreams about the marathon — speed developed early becomes the ceiling-raiser for every distance that comes later.
If you race 5k in 24 minutes, your marathon potential is capped by that speed. Improve your 5k first, and suddenly your goal marathon pace feels dramatically more comfortable. That’s the order of operations at work: capacities built in one phase multiply the value of the next phase.
For adult runners, the takeaway is simple but powerful: don’t let a race on the calendar dictate your development. Let your development dictate the races on your calendar.
Speed Development: The Lowest Hanging Fruit
Here’s something I’ve noticed after coaching adult runners for more than a decade: speed is usually the most neglected skill — and that makes it the lowest hanging fruit for improvement.
Most adult runners can grind out mileage. Far fewer regularly run fast. And by fast, I don’t mean tempo pace! I mean genuinely quick running that might also be described as maximal velocity training. You’re training to run as fast as possible.
If you’re training for a 5k or 10k, speed development is non-negotiable. These races demand a high running economy at fast paces, and the way you build it is by touching real speed regularly — strides, short reps, and eventually faster interval sessions — layered on top of a strong aerobic base.
And if your goal is qualifying for Boston? You still need speed development butt looks different. The emphasis shifts toward tempo runs and marathon-specific fitness as the race approaches but the runner who has spent time developing speed will always have an easier time holding marathon pace than the one who’s only ever run slow.
Speed is a skill, and like any skill, it fades if you never practice it.
How to Build Speed Without Getting Hurt
The obvious objection: “But fast running is how people get injured!”
It’s a fair concern. Running at or near max velocity puts significant stress on muscles and tendons, and adults who haven’t sprinted in twenty years shouldn’t jump straight into all-out 200m reps on the track. But there are safer ways to develop speed, and this progression mitigates most of the risk:
Start with uphill strides. Two or three days per week, finish your easy run with 4–6 x 100m accelerations at roughly 5k to mile race effort up a moderate hill, with full recovery (1-2 minutes of standing). Strides are short enough that fatigue never accumulates, making them the safest introduction to faster running.
Progress to hill sprints. Short hill sprints of 8–10 seconds are one of the best strength-and-speed hybrids in the sport.
Earn the track. Only after weeks of consistent strides and hills should faster track work enter the picture — and even then, start conservatively with shorter reps and generous recovery.
The theme is progression: prepare the body for speed before you demand speed from it. That’s runner development in micro form.
Fundamental Workouts That Build Capacity
Not every workout should target a specific race. Some of the most valuable sessions in a training program are what I’d call fundamental or developmental workouts — sessions that build general capacity that every race distance draws upon.
A few staples:
The fartlek. Structured or unstructured surges within a continuous run like 8–10 x 1 minute on, 1 minute off. Fartlek training develop the ability to change gears, build aerobic power, and carry far less injury risk than track intervals because effort, not pace, drives the session.
The tempo run. Twenty to forty minutes at a “comfortably hard” effort. This is the closest thing to a universal workout in distance running: it raises your lactate threshold, which benefits everything from the mile to the 100-mile ultramarathon.
The progression long run. Instead of running long at one plodding pace, finish the final 15–20 minutes at a strong effort. You’ll build fatigue resistance and teach yourself to run fast on tired legs — a fundamental racing skill.
Hill circuits and strides. As covered above, these build the speed and strength floor that supports everything else.
College programs run versions of these workouts year-round because they build the engine before the race-specific season sharpens it.
Adapting College Training Principles to Adult Runners
You can’t copy a college training program and paste it into your life (nor should you!). College runners are 20 years old, sleep nine hours a night, and have athletic trainers down the hall. Adults have careers, families, and connective tissue that isn’t quite as springy as it used to be…
But you don’t adapt college training by abandoning its principles. You adapt it by adjusting the dosage:
- more recovery between hard sessions (two or three quality days per week instead of three or four)
- longer progressions into each phase of training
- more deliberate strength work to protect aging tissue
- volume scaled to your history rather than your ambition
The principles (order of operations, speed as a skill, fundamental capacity before race-specific fitness, consistency above all) are universal. That’s what makes conversations like this one so valuable.
The Long Game of Runner Development
If there’s one thread running through my entire conversation with Sam Alexander, it’s patience. Runner development is measured in seasons and years, not weeks. The athletes who reach their potential aren’t the ones who train the hardest in any given month. They’re the ones who stack consistent, intelligent training for the longest time without interruption.
That’s true for a freshman arriving at Connecticut College, and it’s true for you.
For the full conversation — including Sam’s take on winter training camp (the “quiet before the storm” that was one of my favorite parts of college), his approach to developing freshmen, and much more detail on the workouts above — find the Strength Running Podcast wherever you get your shows.
And if you’d like to become a fan of the Camels, follow Conn XC/Track on Instagram and keep an eye out for their indoor season.
Just don’t ask them about the 2002 Nationals travel roster. Some wounds aren’t fully healed.
The Strength Running Podcast is one of the top running podcasts in the United States. Subscribe on Apple or Spotify so you never miss an episode.
