Speed/hill/fartleks (Read 1072 times)

Tee hee...she said fartlek! I actually did some hills and fartleks this AM. I like those workouts. Adds a little variety and I do seem to notice an increase in my performance shortly after. I like to do maybe half of the workout as hills, then run home doing some fartlek work. k

Speed: For pure speed I do 8 x 20 seconds at ~ mile pace with 40 second recoveries in the middle of an easy run. Sometiems I do these on a track or a football field and do 12 x 100m instead but not lately. Hills: I don't do too many hill repeats any more. I used to but found these can lead to burn out. You have to be careful doing too many hills too hard. They can be great "peaking" workouts leading up to a race though. Nowadays I just run a lot of my runs over hilly courses. Especially my long runs. Fartleks: I don't call anything in my log "fartlek" although a lot of the workouts I do--especially now when I'm pretty much just in base mode--could be considered such. I'll do things like 3 x 8 minutes on / 3 minutes off or 4 x 6 minutes on 2 off where on = tempo and off equals easy pace. I also do 10 x 2 minutes on / 1 minute off where on is more like 10k race pace or maybe just a little slower. That last one I've been doing in the middle of my long run lateley.

fartleks: I usually don't plan on doing these, they just sort of happen if I feel good. I also use telephone poles (or mailboxes) and just run fast to a target. hills: there's a hill up to a reservoir near my house, so I sometimes do repeats of the hill -- up one side, down the other, and then back. Each repeat is a little over a mile and I'll do 3 or so. I usually like hills better than speed work. speed: In the past month I've done short bursts (200-400m) to work on efficiency and mile-long tempo efforts to elevate my lactate threshold. I'm trying to train from a Daniels Running Formula approach, so after 6 weeks of these I should start doing ~.5 mile repeats to target VO2max. I think when I first started doing speedwork I just did Yasso 800s -- repeats of 800m at your target marathon time (3:30 repeats for a 3hr, 30 min marathon). The idea is to work up to 10 of these before the marathon for guaranteed success

Personally, I think that speed & hill work is the root of all evil!! Some of my routes have a couple of large hills & I run them because I have to to get to the other side...and I whine & complain all the way up & down them. My speedwork is running with my husband & trying to keep up. He runs about 2min/mile faster than me, at least, and the runs feel like death at the time, but give me a sense of accomplishment later. Accomplishment or not, I'm still convinced that speed training was an evil curse imposed by some sprinter on us poor distance people!!

When I run hills with hubby, he hollers over his shoulder, "Come on baby, it's just another step, just another step." I usually consider picking up the nearest rock & hurling it at the back of his head, but then realize it would stop what little momentum I have & I might just roll back down & have to start over!!

Don't look up. Just look at the ground about 4 feet in front of you and concentrate on using those fantastic butt muscles we all have...

That's how I do them too... and it also helps me if I focus on really pumping my arms. I think hills are all about the arms.

here is a question for you all. When you do your fartlek workout do you worry about your distance and time or your workout. I did my 5k run tonight and incorporated my fartlek workout and my time was 4 min slower then my steady run. Is this normal or I'm I doing something wrong. Thanks.

I usually find that too, since the recovery time between intervals is slower than your speed interval is fast...does that make any sense? For me, it's just about the workout. I work on trying to do either one more interval as I increase or to try to increase the interval pace, but I don't care at all about total time. Just as long as I'm home in time for coffee and breakfast!