Interval workouts are among the most effective exercises to boost your body's cardio capacity. Coaches from high school, college, and olympic team use these to condition their athletes and so should you.

For the sake of having an image of the distance, I will be describing the workouts as if you were running on a standard track of 400 meters. Any high school or college nearby should be at this standard.

Warm-up - always warm-up. Never ever skip this!

Now, start off at the beginning of the straight away.
Start out running slow and quickly build up to 80% of your max speed by the middle of the straightaway and then hold that speed until you finish the straightaway.
Slow down to a walking pace as the track begins to curve off to the left. Now continue walk the curve.
As you hit the other straightaway, run again just like you did the first one and slow down to a stop on the next curve.
Continue to repeat this until you have completed 15 sets of straightaways and curves. A single set = 1 straightaway + 1 curve.

That's all it is, run the straightaway and walk the curve - REPEAT. You don't have to do this on a track. You can find any 100 meter stretch of ground and simply run one way and walk back the other.

As you can get better, you don't have to build up your speed, you can start out by running fast. As for the curves (the recovery phase), you can actually jog slow during that part instead of walking. This is a great exercise to get your cardio and sprinting levels up.

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