Your Tempos are bs

i think a lot of people need to run tempos for their own confidence. I see some guys doing workouts that are like 8-9 miles at HM pace or will be running 26 miles 6 weeks before a marathon to know they can do it. seems excessive

i certainly think tempos build toughness and truly get you in better shape, if your body can handle it. They're hard. For me, a 4-6 mile tempo around HM pace is very taxing and i need a lot of recovery after.

I do 7-8 x mile with 60 seconds walk rest instead (goal HM pace is 5:35) it would look something like this:

5:45

5:42

5:39

5:36

5:34

5:32

5:29

5:25

Makes me feel way more confident and less beat up when i do this. i like ending near 10k pace for my own confidence and the faster tempo

Doing intervals without tempos accustoms you to breaks within your races and so you are not able to translate your interval times at all to your (longer) race times. Think about it. I follow a college team that runs all kinds of workouts of 2k intervals on down, but virtually nothing continuous at pace above 2k. Predictably, they run like crap in xc and run not too badly in track, except for in the 5000m, where they all underachieve relative to their interval times for 600s-mile repeats. Whatever the physiological explanation (and the mental is significant, don't discount it), tempos work.

zxcvxcczx wrote:

Doing intervals without tempos accustoms you to breaks within your races and so you are not able to translate your interval times at all to your (longer) race times. Think about it. I follow a college team that runs all kinds of workouts of 2k intervals on down, but virtually nothing continuous at pace above 2k. Predictably, they run like crap in xc and run not too badly in track, except for in the 5000m, where they all underachieve relative to their interval times for 600s-mile repeats. Whatever the physiological explanation (and the mental is significant, don't discount it), tempos work.

+1

Tempos tend to hurt most for those of us that are under developed aerobically. Clear sign that they need to be done.

noe jewton wrote:

zxcvxcczx wrote:

Doing intervals without tempos accustoms you to breaks within your races and so you are not able to translate your interval times at all to your (longer) race times. Think about it. I follow a college team that runs all kinds of workouts of 2k intervals on down, but virtually nothing continuous at pace above 2k. Predictably, they run like crap in xc and run not too badly in track, except for in the 5000m, where they all underachieve relative to their interval times for 600s-mile repeats. Whatever the physiological explanation (and the mental is significant, don't discount it), tempos work.

+1

Tempos tend to hurt most for those of us that are under developed aerobically. Clear sign that they need to be done.

Tempos are good training mentally as well as physically. Plus I enjoy tempos.

I'm not in danger of qualifying for the Olympic trials...so I think I'll just keep running them when I feel like it.

In Daniels 2nd edition, he gives a table for how to adjust the “T” pace running for tempo runs, it tells you how many seconds per mile to add to those pace depending on VDOT and how long the tempo will be

Actually the reason for cruise intervals(at TH.tempo) is so you can spend more time there. Good example is one we do your 20-22 minutes steady at TH and the next session might be 4-6 Miles @ Th with one minute recovery.

I like tempos for just getting a good effort in and for pain tolerance. I wouldn’t call them painful exactly, but they take a lot of focus to keep up on pace which really helps for races

You have to believe as I do that there is a benefit to training different ranges for different adaptations. Running at levels that keep the blood lactate at around 4 mmol is beneficial. Some workouts you want the body to adapt to buffering lactate levels of over 15.

The main difference between a sustained tempo run and something like cruise intervals is that the continuous nature of the tempo run gives you more time to feel your way into the effort. The idea of tempo running is just that: running with tempo -- rhythm, flow, briskness -- developing efficiencies and rhythms at faster paces and learning to react and relax as the body develops fatigue

Cruise intervals are great, too, but they are broken up, which in my experience tends to make it harder to find the rhythm and feel you would find in a tempo. I guess I see them as a prelude to and practice for a future tempo pace.

Cruise intervals may be better physiologically. I don't really know about that, but my guess is that it's more or less a wash on that front.

Once you start trying to determine what a tempo is by reference to specific paces or physiological reactions, you end up making a thing which is intentionally vague into something too precise. That vagueness is essential to what a tempo is -- we have to feel our way into it, find the right tempo. My sense is that the physiology is all post-hoc. Physiologists saw runners improved when they did tempo runs. So they looked for the things that were happening physiologically at those paces and made them into something that runners ought to target.

Tempo pushes your threshold closer to VO2max plus it has a positive psychological effect as you get used to running somewhat hard for a long time.

Fast Twitch Guys wrote:

Actually, for guys who are more fast twitch oriented, tempos are a critical workout...

Nice post. I'm fast twitch oriented and feel tempos/cruise intervals do a hell of a lot of good. Speed reps are laughably easy (at Daniels paces) and easy long runs are, well, easy. VO2max intervals are proper running but unmaintainable obviously. Threshold pace feels like the most solid, productive work.