How to Improve Time Trialing Abilities

Performance-oriented organizations use a time trial to evaluate a specific skill set. Organizations with mandated fitness programs, including the U.S. Armed Forces, police and athletic teams, use running time trials to evaluate aerobic fitness. Each time trial for running has a slightly different dynamic, but each contains common trainable principles. Following a plan designed to improve your fitness ability can help you improve your running time trials.

Things You'll Need

  • Watch with chronograph and split functions
  • Light, breathable running clothes
  • Socks, ankle height or higher
  • Appropriate running shoes
  • Bottled water
  • Measured, rubberized running surface
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Instructions

    • 1
      Analyze your time trial.

      Determine how environmental factors and your exercise's structure affect you negatively, and develop a plan of action to surpass those obstacles. Because each time trial is different, the factors may vary. Body weight exercises before military time trials, for example, are factors in aerobic performance.

    • 2

      Assess distance and time requirements to calculate the pace you need to travel to meet your time trial goal. Pace is expressed in minutes per mile. For example, a 16-minute two-mile equals an eight-minutes per mile pace.

    • 3

      Run the exact distance of your time trial, if possible, to assess your current level of physical fitness. Compare your actual mile pace to your goal pace. That will show you how much faster you need to run to meet your time trial goal. Combine that information with the plan you created to overcome environmental factors and your exercise's structure obstacles. The result will help you create a training plan.

    • 4
      Fine tune your fitness.

      Improve your aerobic fitness by doing long runs during the first 1/4 or 1/2 of your training plan. Vary the pace and distance of the runs, and gradually increase the number of miles you run weekly.

    • 5

      Incorporate speed workouts appropriate to the distance of your time trial starting the second 1/2 of your training plan. Run speed repeats equivalent to your time trial distance. If your time trial distance is 3200 meters, just shy of two miles, for example, then good speed intervals are eight repetitions of 400-meter sprints or four repetitions of 800-meter sprints.

    • 6

      Run a time trial about one week before your official time trial. Attempt to recreate the structure of the official time trial in your practice. Note your mile pace and your pace within each mile, broken down to 1/4-mile or 400-meter splits if possible. That will help you learn where your pace changed and to what degree.

    • 7
      Your second time trial should show an improvement.

      Decrease your workouts by 10 to 20 percent in distance and intensity. You will not lose aerobic ability in one week of training time by doing that, and it will give your muscles the chance to recover.

    • 8

      Maximize your potential. Focus on pushing past the lactate threshold -- the point at which lactic acid builds from muscular effort -- at the halfway mark. Consciously push harder at that point. This saves a greater amount of time by placing you further ahead when the final laps bring another adrenaline rush.

    • 9

      Record your mile splits if possible. This applies to practice time trials and the real time trial. It will teach you what you did well and what you can improve in the next attempt. Over time, each runner develops his own techniques to cut time off his time trials. Some methods include increasing pace in the last 1/2 mile for slower runners or kicking hard in the last lap for faster runners. Practice helps to establish which methods work for you.