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Tempo Workouts (Read 237 times)


Feeling the growl again

     

    40 minutes at hour race pace doesn't sound very comfortable to me.  25 minutes, maybe.

     

    There is nothing comfortable about 40min at 1 hour race pace during full volume.  That' probably above race effort.

     

    The problem here is trying to definitively give people paces to do workouts at.  It's an effort level, people.  The paces are mere guidelines until you learn to do the workouts properly.  When I do a tempo run...from 4 miles to 10 miles....I'm simply trying to hit the effort level that is comfortably hard for whatever the distance is.  This takes practice but after a few iterations you forget about pre-conceived paces.  Some weeks it is faster, some slower, depending on overall training situation.  But the benefit is the same as long as you aren't forcing some preconceived idea on the workout.

    "If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does.  There's your pep talk for today.  Go Run." -- Slo_Hand

     

    I am spaniel - Crusher of Treadmills

     

      I used to be confused about exactly what defined a "tempo" run. It's a term that's used in so many sometimes seemingly contradictory ways. Eventually I decided on a definition that makes sense to me. I suggest that everyone should do the same, and then get happily on with your running lives. Whatever it is to you, you're right. And you (and I) should probably do one soon. The end.

      A list of my PRs in a misguided attempt to impress people that do not care.

      npaden


        Ugh.  My 8 miles at MP was beyond comfortably hard tonight at 79 degrees, sunny and 20 mph wind.  It was tough.  Especially since I was an idiot and didn't carry any water with me.

         

        2 weeks ago my 8 miles at MP was almost more of a moderate run at 47 degrees, overcast and a light breeze.  Never even crossed my mind to think that I needed to carry water with me.

         

        Do either of them get to count as a Tempo?  Wink

        Age: 50 Weight: 224 Height: 6'3" (Goal weight 195)

        Current PR's:  Mara 3:14:36* (2017); HM 1:36:13 (2017); 10K 43:59 (2014); 5K 21:12 (2016)

        drifter


          Big grin

          We should ban tempo on this site.

          J-L-C


            This is a pretty good thread on tempos and the purposes of various "tempo" workouts.

             

            Tempo run length vs. speed


            SMART Approach

              This is a pretty good thread on tempos and the purposes of various "tempo" workouts.

               

              Tempo run length vs. speed

               

              Yes, that is a great thread!!! Great info! Makes sense! I forward that one on a lot! Tinman is "the man".

              Run Coach. Recovery Coach. Founder of SMART Approach Training, Coaching & Recovery

              Structured Marathon Adaptive Recovery Training

              Safe Muscle Activation Recovery Technique

              www.smartapproachtraining.com


              Dream Maker

                What do all of you believe the most effective tempo workouts are? In the past I've done a lot of tempo miles with 1 minute recoveries, but it seems to me that the straight 4 or 5 mile tempo run would give you more benefit. I'm probably going to start throwing in tempos occasionally and would like to hear all of your thoughts. Thanks.

                 

                 

                Daniels has his classic tempo -- 20 minutes easy, 20 minutes at the pace you could race for one hour, 20 minutes easy.... and a chart varying the pace as the time you;re going changes (I think marathon pace is t pace at runs in excess of an hour)

                I like that.

                The workouts I did that I felt like helped before my not-very-fast PRs--- is the classic tempo, sometimes doubled (20 minutes easy, 20 minutes threshold, 20 easy, 20 threshold)--- alternating marathon pace and 5 minutes threshold pace for a run of 1:30-2:00. -- and the cruise intervals (1 mile threshold, 60 seconds easy, repeat)  I pretty much pulled them all from Daniels.

                 

                Have you read Daniels Running Formula in the tempo chapter? I only ask because it directly explains the miles with recovery vs the 4-5 miles etc. and why/how the pace changes... kind of directly to your question.

                 

                (It is comfortably hard.

                but the extra bit of info helps some. like me.

                If you give my lazy, lazy, lazy brain a choice in the definition, comfortably can never pair with hard. It's easy or it sucks.  But with some reinforcement it sticks.)

                 

                 


                Right on Hereford...

                   

                  Now see... you're implying it's planned marathon pace, not marathon pace.  Those are different things.  If your planned marathon pace is 'a reach' for you, then yeah, 6 miles at planned marathon pace can be a little challenging... but if 6 miles at planned marathon pace is 'comfortably hard' at the beginning of your marathon training cycle (assuming it's 18 weeks or less), I'd wager you won't make it 26 miles at that pace on race day.

                   

                  Um, you would lose that wager in many cases. MP always feels 'comfortably hard' or even 'way too hard' for me at the beginning, and often middle, of my marathon training cycles.

                   

                  And I don't understand your distinction between 'planned marathon pace' and 'marathon pace.' If my PR is X:XX pace, and I'm planning to run X:XX - 3 seconds (a realistic goal for me), are they really that different? They both feel friggin hard at the beginning of a training cycle.


                  Dream Maker

                    However, if I currently could run a 4:00 marathon, and my goal marathon pace is 3:40, that's quite different.  Your goal marathon pace can be quite different than your marathon pace if you're running based on current fitness.  (In Daniels he says always run on current fitness which can be quite different from PR fitness and from goals if you set goals in advance like that.  4 months of solid training and current pace and goal pace might be very different.

                     

                     

                    And I don't understand your distinction between 'planned marathon pace' and 'marathon pace.' If my PR is X:XX pace, and I'm planning to run X:XX - 3 seconds (a realistic goal for me), are they really that different? They both feel friggin hard at the beginning of a training cycle.

                     

                     

                      Big grin

                      We should ban tempo on this site.

                      I already banned it from my log years ago. Wink

                       

                      I do have subLT runs though. Considering how many definitions and methodologies there are for LT, it's still a somewhat fuzzy zone and term, but it more clearly describes what type of run it is- for *me*.

                       

                      I don't do pace workouts since I'm mostly training and racing on hilly trails or snowy flat stuff.

                      "So many people get stuck in the routine of life that their dreams waste away. This is about living the dream." - Cave Dog

                         

                        Um, you would lose that wager in many cases. MP always feels 'comfortably hard' or even 'way too hard' for me at the beginning, and often middle, of my marathon training cycles.

                        +1.

                         

                        I normally go by effort, not pace, in tempo runs. But there have been plenty of times in the early or middle stages of a marathon buildup when 4 or 5 mile tempo runs that felt really hard wound up being at 6:30 pace or slower. Off of a couple of those marathon cycles I was able, 2 or 3 months later, all tapered and rested, to run sub 6:30s for a whole marathon.

                        Runners run

                        Mr MattM


                          +1.

                           

                          I normally go by effort, not pace, in tempo runs. But there have been plenty of times in the early or middle stages of a marathon buildup when 4 or 5 mile tempo runs that felt really hard wound up being at 6:30 pace or slower. Off of a couple of those marathon cycles I was able, 2 or 3 months later, all tapered and rested, to run sub 6:30s for a whole marathon.

                           

                          Ah, see... this is totally different to me.  If someone says "I ran a 6 mile tempo run today and it was at MP" that's very different than someone who says "I'm planning to run a 6 mile tempo today at MP".  I'll agree that at some points in training a 'tempo effort' could be MP.  However, I've seen people who plan, or recommend to newer runners, that they schedule a '5-6 mile tempo run at MP'.  That's different, yes?

                           

                          FWIW, during the build up to my PR marathon I did not run a single mile at, or faster than, my goal marathon pace... but I ran quite a lot of 10-15 mile runs at GMP + (10-20).  I'm realy not big on traditional tempo runs and rarely do them.  I'm just not a fan of the ambiguity associated with the term 'tempo'.

                          be curious; not judgmental

                             That's different, yes?

                             

                            I guess so? I don't really have a problem with "tempo run" being used broadly. As much as I appreciate all the good that Jack Daniels has done, I think we'd all be better off if he hadn't tried to so narrowly define the term "tempo run." People had been doing tempo runs for a long time without a narrow definition of the word and their legs hadn't fallen off so I don't see what problem he was trying to solve. If nothing else he could have saved us all a lot of words on message boards.

                             

                            When I was in high school we did tempo runs without watches on courses of unknown distance. Every elite level distance runner I know uses the word tempo run pretty liberally to include marathon pace as well. I'm not gonna worry about it.

                            Runners run

                            Mr MattM


                              It's kind of like Higdon, who has his version of Tempo Run as a slow progression run, peaking at 10k pace for a few minutes, then a cool down.  That's what's in his plan descriptions... for what everyone would call a 'Tempo Run', he calls it a Fast Continuous Run (FCR).  I'm not worrying about it... I'm just cranking up some discussion.

                               

                              Actually, I'm heading south for some trout fishing.  Booyah!

                              be curious; not judgmental


                              Why is it sideways?

                                Daniels is great, and I used his book a ton in high school coaching just because of the ease of translating concepts and paces to a wide variety of runners.

                                 

                                One distinction that may sorta clear things up a bit is the distinction between training as developing skills vs. training as developing physiological capacities.

                                 

                                When runners talk about tempos, they are usually talking training in terms of a skill: relaxing at a fast pace, balancing effort with relaxation, sustaining concentration, working on feeling the body. These skills can (and should) be practiced over a variety of distances and paces. So, here the variety of types of tempo running is just working on developing a skill of running, and it's not vague or ambiguous at all.

                                 

                                This of course leads to confusion when people want to talk about training as developing specific physiological capacities like lactic threshold because there you have an ideal pace and distance for a specific ideal stimulus for the specific physiological outcome. From this perspective, tempos seem really ambiguous, fuzzy, and confusing, but that's because the word is really being lifted up and placed into a different context than the one it gets its  meaning from.

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