Fartlek pace translated to race pace

Hey majorkey, nice to see you around.

I'm not competing anymore, but did Fartlek yesterday.

I always thought that Fartlek should be pace variations, but without specific targets.

Anyway, I see you are excited about the new season.

Good luck in your race!

Basically, I agree with George. Fartlek, even if it's somewhat structured, should be about hitting a range of several loosely defined paces, not specific per-mile-pace target times. It should also largely depend on how good/fast you feel that day.

If the goal is to run at one specific pace for a set amount of time or distance, followed by an easy segment, and to repeat that cycle multiple times, that's an interval workout. It's not a fartlek.

If you search for fartlek workouts, you will find a lot of ideas and options that you can tailor to your situation. Or you can ask your coach for some more specific guidance.

But the beauty of fartlek is that you're running a variety of distances at a variety of paces, some hard and some not so hard. If you're using a watch, it should be only to tell you when to speed up and when to slow down. It should not be telling you how fast to go. That should come from within you, based on how you feel.

That doesn't mean fartlek workouts have to be easy. They can be extremely challenging without you being a slave to your watch.

If you're determined to run 5:20 mile pace over and over, then go to the track and run 800s in 2:40.

Well todays fartlek was 4 minutes at "tempo pace" which was like 6:05 pace, then 2x3 minutes at 10k pace, 3x2 minutes at 5k pace then finally 4x1 minutes at 3k. Each had a 2 minute jog recovery in between except the last one it was 1 minute recovery. It's usually fast because my teammates make it fast. I just try holding form and making sure I run smooth. Today I didn't feel so good so I averaged 5:50 with the jog recovery in a total of 3.5 miles.

majorkey wrote:

Well todays fartlek was 4 minutes at "tempo pace" which was like 6:05 pace, then 2x3 minutes at 10k pace, 3x2 minutes at 5k pace then finally 4x1 minutes at 3k. Each had a 2 minute jog recovery in between except the last one it was 1 minute recovery. It's usually fast because my teammates make it fast. I just try holding form and making sure I run smooth. Today I didn't feel so good so I averaged 5:50 with the jog recovery in a total of 3.5 miles.

This sounds quite intense and a little too structured, this could bring you to a peak leading up to an important race, but if it's a base building phase you could be producing too much lactic acid.

It's during base phase but we do these like once every 2 weeks we do another workout that's circuit training so combination of ab workouts and 3 minutes at tempo pace and working down.. It's a little tough because my teammates push the pace and we take turns leading so once I lead I get pretty tired.