Name something you did post collegiately that made you a faster runner

I started banging a neighbors hot and horny wife. He came home early one day and you should have seen how fast I got out of there. I have found that nothing makes you faster than a jealous enraged husband.

I found someone a little faster than me to train with. I had to push to keep up even on the easy days. It made me very tough, and consistent.

EPO

I started running my easy runs at an easy pace.

Bear of Bad News wrote:

I started running my easy runs at an easy pace.

Ditto. Only i'm still in college, so do i not count?

more miles, more often (doubles consistently a couple times a week)

fewer speed workouts in general but harder ones with longer intervals when id do them

not caring too much about pace on 80-90% of my training days - easy to moderate days (could range from 6:30 if feeling good to 8 or 9 on a shakeout run)

im PR'ing like crazy under this system now but it's most likely in part because in college i had many setbacks, most likely due to intense studying, not much sleep, and running lower mileage with all running on the quick side everyday w/ bunches of teammates instead of listening to my body and doing my own thing and getting good sleep

anyone else have similar story?

I quit drinking.

ate food

I was outside of the top 7 on a nationally ranked D1 team. I always ran my workouts way too hard with the idea that it would help me break into that group. Instead, I was dead for meets and had several injuries. When I got out of school, I took a year almost entirely off before starting back. I still hammered most of my continuous runs instead of going easy, but I stopped doing intervals unless I actually wanted to and did a lot more things like progression runs, fartleks, or a few hard repeats at the end of a run instead of a whole workout of intervals. I only ran the pace and distance I felt like running, which kept me from that overtrained dead feeling. I also dropped my mileage but added in more pool workouts and strength training. Not only did I end up running as fast as I did in college, but I enjoyed it a heck of a lot more. If I had the maturity and patience in college to train at the paces appropriate for my conditioning level instead of always trying to jump into workouts with people training at the next level, I might have been able to catch up to them eventually, instead of getting hurt so much and burning out.

Really simple: drank less, ran more.

Weird, I never got any faster. I am not sure how I could have been any faster.

College is the perfect environment for training. Once you are out of school, you have work, social obligations, etc. It is just too hard to take running as seriously.

I ran fast in college, but it was because I had time to run more miles, I had a coach, I had a reason to run fast, I had a team full of fast guys to run with and I had all of the facilities necessary to get the job done.

After college, I had a job, bills to pay and no real reason to keep training super hard. I still run a lot, but I have other priorities now.

-Went from about 20-30 beers a week, to one or two

-Went from getting very sporadic sleep to getting consistent 8 hours of sleep

-Ran more on grass and trails

-Ran more tempo and hill runs and less intervals

-Raced less

-Raced a wider range of distances from road miles to 1/2 marathons

-Had more flexibility in the quality workouts such as cutting them short or rescheduling them if not feeling right or running harder or longer on days feeling good

-Eating better

dropped 6 pounds, made a big difference.

I joined a USATF Post Collegiate Running Club and went to all the workouts and races.