Running has become the defining sport of the quarantine era. With gyms closed and team sports on hiatus, it's one of best ways to move our bodies and focus on our mental and physical health—which we all need right now. Which is not to say it's not a strange time to run: races are cancelled for the foreseeable future, you can't meet up for a workout with your friends or teammates, and practicing social distancing makes a lot of routes frustrating or impossible. But at least we can run.

That's something I'm grateful for, because running has become a huge part of my life. In high school and college I ran track and played football—I never thought distance running was for me. As recently as four years ago, I said I'd never run a marathon. Now I'm dead set on running my fourth. It all started when I took ten weeks to train a client of mine, Eugene Tong, from scratch to chugging through 26.2 miles for a respectable finish at the New York City Marathon. Running with him during training and seeing his progress lit a fire in me—I signed up for next year’s L.A. Marathon the next day. I struggled through that course’s endless hills and found God at mile 18. That same year, I surged through the streets of New York, feeding off the energy of my current home. Then last year I met my goal of breaking three hours with the oh so flat course of Chicago. It’s been a wonderful experience. Everyone knows that running a marathon is about endurance, and it is, but to do it well you need more than that. My secret was picking up the pace on some runs and turning up the intensity on at the track.

In this weird time, the track is one of the best places to get a workout in right now. It's a bit counterintuitive, since it's a gathering place, but unlike parks or sidewalks, there aren't any dog walkers or rollerbladers to weave six feet away from. And a standard track is more than 30 feet wide, meaning there's plenty of room to give each other enough space.

Now, I know many of y’all have NO plans to ever run a marathon—and unlike me you mean it. That is fine, but a lot of you may be runners. And really, everyone is a runner—it’s what our bodies were made to do—and any runner will get something out of trying to go faster. That means speed is for everyone, right? But here's the thing: even as elite athletes get faster, the general population seems to be getting slower, with race times declining, even accounting for more people signing up.

I think this is a trend worth fighting. It’s not just about getting into shape or getting a better time—there’s something special about truly seeing what your body and mind can do if you push yourself. One of the great things about running is that, unlike so many complicated things in life, it rewards the effort you put into it almost immediately. And anyone who expands their comfort zone will quickly be capable of things that would have been impossible a few weeks before. The best way to do that is to hit the track. Here’s how.

1. Find a Track.

This is almost certainly a track near you. Yours might be in a public park—my track of choice is at a local high school. Every school will have different rules about public access—they’re likely cool with you getting a workout in if it’s not locked up, especially on the weekends, but be respectful, above all, and certainly don’t get in the way of practice or P.E. class. The track can be a good place to get a distanced workout in during coronavirus, but it's worth taking pains to avoid crowds right now. There are certain tracks in New York that would not be a great idea to use on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and that might be the case near you too.

On any track there is some basic etiquette to know: Save the inside lanes for all-out efforts, never stop or stretch where you’ll get in the way of other runners, and always run counter-clockwise.

If you’re at a loss, a running club near you will always know where to go. They may even have their own “track” set up in a park or on a public path with some stripes of spray paint at measured intervals. And if you can’t find a track, a few streets or an enclosed area in which you know you can run relatively uninterrupted will work just fine—you won’t have the benefit of precisely-measured 400-meters intervals, but just remember that track workouts can be ballparked by time rather than distance. In the era of social distancing, it's a great time to explore your city and find some consistently empty quarter-mile stretches.

2. Put in the Speedwork.

Speedwork is running lingo for anything quicker than your standard running pace, which is typically about the fastest you can go and still hold a steady conversation. It’s speedwork that you’re going to want to do on the track. (Nobody is going to stop you from banging out a leisurely hour jog over 24 laps, but that might get monotonous!)

Faster than usual does not always mean as fast as you can go. Speedwork does include maximum-effort sprints, but it also incorporates efforts at fast but controlled paces. (This is often called “tempo” pace.) The exact pace will depend on your goal and how long you’re running—repeats of 200 meters will be different than a two-mile tempo.

Pace and distance are only two sides of the speedwork triangle. The mistake many runners make is to ignore the rest periods in their workout. But rest is not your enemy. Proper recovery between efforts allows you to stress different systems of your body—you might run out of breath before you’re challenging your muscles in a long, steady effort, but shorter bursts with a break in between can allow you to work your muscles harder than you ever could with a flat-out run. We also need rest to ensure that the effort remains consistent throughout—your last rep should be as good as your first. If you’re slipping off the pace by the end of your set, he workout is either a bit too hard or you're not using your rest periods correctly.

3. Understand What’s Happening to Your Body.

It gets you stronger

Running fast is a strength exercise! When you’re really hustling you typically need bigger and different muscle contractions than you do when you’re jogging easy. This aspect of the nervous system and body in general is getting used to “firing.” Think about how walking doesn’t do much to activate your glute muscles but going up stairs two at a time does. Pair this with some body weight isolation exercises targeting the glutes and you may get that stronger backside you’ve been looking for. Same goes with your core: Instead of excessive isolation exercises, we can use sprinting to get our abs in shape.

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Improves your running ability

Track work makes you faster at all distances. But don’t just take my word for it: I’m helping Nikki Ogunnaike, GQ’s deputy fashion director, get in shape for a half marathon and she’s actually found joy in the monotonous process.

“What I really love about speed work is that in the moment, while it may feel like I’m just running around in circles, over time I’ve found myself getting faster both in my recovery runs and long runs,” she says.

One of my good friends, Leigh Anne Sharek, went from a solid runner to an Olympic Marathon Trials qualifier by incorporating speed work into her training. She had noticed that most marathoners simply do long runs or long intervals. What if instead she switched this up and started training like a miler? Would it improve her time? It did, by almost 13 minutes.

“Speedwork pushes you out of your comfort zone, demands more cardiovascular output, requires an increased range of motion, and reinforces and updates the body’s coordinated movement abilities—the basis of more efficient running form,” she says. “It is one of the best tools for increasing your running economy—maintaining faster and faster paces with less effort.”

Gets you in shape a bit faster

We all know the potential that HIIT training has to make gains faster, and sprinting is the original high intensity interval training—you go hard (sprint) and you take a break (interval of rest). HIIT was not made at a $40 indoor class; it was made out on the track.

4. Do the Workouts.

The great benefit of working out on the track is knowing exactly how fast and how far you're going. And for many speed workouts you will see pace specified—“mile pace" or "5k pace." But these only help if you actually know your race paces. Fortunately, there is a concept called “RPE,” rated perceived exertion—that simply asks you to judge your effort level. Research shows it's surprisingly effective, and developing an innate sense of how fast you're going is a core running skill that's worth developing.

Two sprint workouts

6x30 seconds at max effort, 2-3 minute rest between reps

12x100 meters at 90% effort, 2 minute rest between reps

Two speed endurance workouts

10x200 meters at 80% effort, with 90 seconds of rest between reps. (This will be about as fast as your mile pace.)

8x400 meters at 70% effort, with 90 seconds of rest between reps. (This will be roughly your 5k pace.)

5. Enjoy It.

Let's be real for a second: running hard in little circles can be monotonous if you let it. It can be painful in the moment—maybe should be, at least a little. But your body is yours. Explore it and challenge it. Find the enjoyment in maximizing your mental and physical capacities for no other reason but for the simple fact that you can—because that’s a blessing. There's some real satisfaction to be had in getting out and pushing yourself. As Ogunnaike put it, “The track is very Karate Kid: wax-on, wax off. You think you’re doing a menial task and then when the day comes, you’re fully prepared to conquer your goal.”

Joe Holder is a GQ Columnist.InstagramXRelated Stories for GQWorking Out