Fartlek, Running At Various Speeds During A Training SessionFartlek, what the heck!!!Not a swear word, actually a method of training whereby you play with speed. There are variations of this training method, but here are some guidelines to develop your own.With this kind of training nothing is cast in stone, so you really decide how the trainings going to go as you go along. Don't get bogged down with specifics it will just ruin your run, remember it's playing with speed so enjoy and don't push yourself to hard. An informal session can go something like this, warm up for a kilometer or so and then vary your pace over distances from 100m to 1km. Doing this with other runners works well as each person takes chances to take the lead and sets the pace for the rest, then drops back and the next person takes over. A formal session would look something like this, run 2-3km warm up, repeat a series of one minute hard runs, followed by a 3min easy jog and then 2-3km to warm down again. These sessions however are fairly rigid and actually defeat the object of the exercise. You should incorporate this into your training, it's a break from running at the same pace all the time and a good way to develop that kick at the end of a race. You will also develop some serious speed, so if you are looking to break that PB then you need to be doing this.. Here's a short video that explains this training method as well. from fartlek back to 10k training program |