Have you ever heard of the 10000h hour rule ? Like you need 10000 dedicated, specialty practice hours of a craft, before you can become proficient at it. Focused violin practice. Martial art practice. Basketball practice. Soccer practice.

Never experienced a runner saying to me, I am going out for a run practice. Neither did from a cyclist ! Actually from a swimmer, yesss:  “- I am going for my morning swim practice” !

I think it is because, people went away from a skill based running. Running as a sport did not really exist back in the days. It was and it is still called athletics / athletisme. Those athletes competing in the sport of running, did not ever went for a jog or for an easy run. This phenomenon is the reason that we see so many injuries and running problems. Wake up, lace up, go for a stroll in the local concrete jungle. Ah, my knees hurt. Normal. It is 6am, cold and your last mobility session was never !

Running practice

Jogging around and the so-called easy runs (not the easy runs described by Hudson or Daniels) are very much useless, if you wanted to become a better runner. Is it not more functional to go on the track, what is a soft surface and practice running ? You can start your warm up with some foam rolling, mobility exercises and Warthons Active Isolated Stretching. 10minutes top. Then continue with some low key movements and slowly but surely bring in the dynamic and plyometric schooling drills. You can include hurdles for a better hip openness. Honestly the number of drills you can do and learn are infinite ! After 45minutes of getting these functional moves done, you can choose and decide, that you do proper 40 50 60 meter accelerations or go for  10 x 20sec proper form rep set. I am not talking about all out accelerations or the run ugly notion. No. Very much controlled posture and forward lean, with a fantastic forefoot stride.

All of these athletic educatifs will enhance correct foot fall, your muscular contraction and balance and provide you with more propel for forward motion, without actually engaging your muscles more.
Most people could do at least half of these drills in a small apartment. Then walk down and do the running part outdoors.

Here are some examples, but you can find countless videos on the subject of athletic schooling drills:

I encurage everybody willing to become better, year after year to engage in running practice and give up jogging. An hour of a slog around the bloc is useless, compared to these highly functional exercises. Those will make you a better runner, not the extra 5km to add up to that 50 or 100mile weekly distance. Running is a time based sport. What time you can run for a certain distance ? What time can you spend a week in proper running form and in strenght routines. What can you do in 24h ! The 6day race ! Sub 10sec 100 dash ! Forget about your weekly mileage and focus on time spent ! Time used for really enhancing your skills, abilities, mobility, resistance ! Kill the jog time ! Your heart rate will be lower and range of motion higher. Guess what, this leads to better recovery and faster times when the coach demandes 10 X 800 at pace !