Queen of 3rd Place
Hey Spaniel, I bet you can't piss blood 4 days in a row.
Oh man, tough audience!
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Ex runner
I've got a stupid question about tempo runs - how do you actually figure the pace? Am I the only person out ther without a Garmin? Do you garminless folks just pick a landmark on your run to start your watch and go from there?
No garmin for me. Sometimes I'll go on a route where I know the approximate mile markers other times I'll just run to feel. I use the measured routes just so that I can put the pacing in check to ensure I don't go out too hard and can't maintain a consistent pace for the duration. Simple answer to tempo pacing is to keep it comfortably hard. Go hard enough to when you're done you know you've put in a tough effort but still have some left in the tank to where you can go further. Some may disagree but that is the rule of thumb I've used.
There's a lot of guidelines regarding tempo pacing. You can always check the McMillan calculator. Target 20-30 sec per mile slower than your 5k race pace. I've heard that 15k to Half-marathon race pace is good for tempo pacing. Point to all of this is that there are lots of thoughts on a number to a pace to use. I don't use any of that and just run to a comfortably hard pace.
On tempos I've always understood it to be a pace you can hold for up to one hour so approximately 15k pace in my case.
"He conquers who endures" - Persius "Every workout should have a purpose. Every purpose should link back to achieving a training objective." - Spaniel
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Feeling the growl again
Damn, I just about pissed myself with that one. Well played.
I'll comment more on the tempo stuff later when I have more time. I did get un-stupid enough to skip the planned 10 miles tonight. I've got a sudden case of piriformis/sciatica or something too. When it rains it pours.
"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
Ah.
"If you have the fire, run..." -John Climacus
No garmin for me. Sometimes I'll go on a route where I know the approximate mile markers other times I'll just run to feel. I use the measured routes just so that I can put the pacing in check to ensure I don't go out too hard and can't maintain a consistent pace for the duration. Simple answer to tempo pacing is to keep it comfortably hard. Go hard enough to when you're done you know you've put in a tough effort but still have some left in the tank to where you can go further. Some may disagree but that is the rule of thumb I've used. There's a lot of guidelines regarding tempo pacing. You can always check the McMillan calculator. Target 20-30 sec per mile slower than your 5k race pace. I've heard that 15k to Half-marathon race pace is good for tempo pacing. Point to all of this is that there are lots of thoughts on a number to a pace to use. I don't use any of that and just run to a comfortably hard pace.
Thanks this is helpful, I've looked up the pace I should be running these at on McMillian, I'm more curious about how people handle it mechincally. Sounds like the simplest way is some combination of using a route where you roughly know the mile markers and feel.
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If he bleeds for four days and doesn't die, technically that makes him a woman.
The process is the goal.
Men heap together the mistakes of their lives, and create a monster they call Destiny.
Zip it people. I'm the one that gets beat to hell from the workouts if you get him riled up.
I think I am finding that when I get that slightly sore-slightly fluish feeling after a tough workout, I have hit it dead on. Not too much, not to little - the Goldilocks Zone. Had one of those today with some 3K repeats at the razor's edge of my anaerobic threshold. The exciting thing for me today was that I wanted to bag it after 3, but I actually had the balls to push things and try to do a 4th without falling apart. And I did! And then I had the energy to do 30min of drills and stretching afterward. I am consistently trying to keep myself just out of the comfort zone. I don't want to do too much and burn out and get injured. But you stagnate if you don't push the envelope...
Goals for 2013: sub 18 5K; stay healthy
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Good description.
4X3K? Dang dude. I did 3 at 10K pace once and that was a killer.
Technically, the best description I have heard of tempo pace, in the most literal sense, is your current one-hour race pace. For some that is 15K, for some 10mile, and for elites HM race pace. Note that it is TIME dependent, not distance!
In execution, this will work for tempo runs in the 20-30min range and tempo intervals (like 2-3X15min etc). Anything longer and it is too hard.
In practice I interpret tempo a bit more loosely. I also regularly run 6 mile tempos (so about 34-35min) and even 8-10 mile tempos. Obviously the pace is somewhat slower on these. I'm sure the purpose is shifting more to endurance than raw VO2 and aerobic power building but I'm ok with that, I enjoy the variety.
How to tell what pace? Ideally, obviously, this will be by feel. If you have to slow down during the tempo you know you went out too fast and need to slow down. If you finish feeling too fresh (see Diamond J's description of a good after-workout feeling) then go faster the next time. A little trial and error is better then sticking to arbitrary numbers you may not have recent races to give you, or are irrelevant because a) your conditioning has improved, or b) your feeling better/worse on the workout day.
I try to mix it up but use the 4-mile tempo run as one of my key fitness indicators.
Favorite tempo workouts:
4-mile tempo
6-mile tempo
8 or 10-mile "tempos" occasionally -- MP indicators
10minON/5OFF/8ON/4OFF/6ON/3OFF/4ON/2OFF/2ON with ON paces being 10K pace, OFF paces fast recovery (~30-40sec faster than normal easy pace) -- With warmup, use 10 mile total time during workout as indicator
3X15min, 5min easy pace recovery
etc etc etc
I use GPS a lot and if not I know the mile markers on most routes I run. If not it is just by feel.
A little trial and error is better then sticking to arbitrary numbers you may not have recent races to give you, or are irrelevant because a) your conditioning has improved, or b) your feeling better/worse on the workout day.
This is something I definitely need to remember. Very helpful post Spaniel, thanks.
I just typically do mine by time or from the same spot to my house - For comparison purposes.
4x10 minutes
4 ish mile
4-5 x 2 miles (If on TM)
2x4-5 mile (TM)
8-9 mile(ish) on rare occassion
That's about it
For Faster workouts
4-5x5 minutes
striders
fartleks
That's about all I do
Damn - I have no imagination
Long dead ... But my stench lingers !
Nads, like you I'm a relative newbie and terms like comfortably hard or 1 hour race pace didn't help me much, so here's what I did
1) ran a couple of races (instead of my usual "races")
2) used the race times to look up tempo paces from various sources (Daniels, McMillan - they don't vary much)
3) ran a few tempo workouts using those paces as a starting point, paying very close attention to how it felt
4) stopped looking at the watch and continued doing the workouts by feel - during several weeks, the pace went down about 15 - 20 sec/mi at the same perceived effort, although I was slower for a couple of those workouts