fartlek ideas

Try surging between telephone poles, something like 2 on /3 0ff

3 on 1 off try to work up to ten. its a bitch of a workout.

That workout is officially known as polish intervals.

Eat a bowl of beans. Fart and then lick it up.

Hope this helps.

Here is one I am doing today and this is one of my pet workouts - it is good for hot weather when doing programmed intervals is depressing:

Warmup

1 min, 2 min, 3 min, 4,5,6,5,4,3,2,1 with 1/2 the time of the previous interval recovery. Thus after the 1 min. you jog 30 seconds, 1 min. jog after the 2 min. interval, etc. The whole workout lasts 53:30 and I like to see how much total distance I can cover including hard and easy parts. The trick is to run the short stuff hard enough to put time in the bank, yet still be able to cover as much ground as possible on the hard stuff - going 2 seconds too fast on the 1 minute might cost you 10 seconds on the 6 min. But going too slow on the short stuff might not help the long stuff any. You can either do the jog straight through or start each interval where you finished the last one so you get a total distance for the 36 hard minutes.

here's a long one.... 1234567654321 all in minutes rest same as interval

shorter one 1 min on 3 off about 10-12 times, if you want a really light one.

you can change the first to anything you want really 123454321, 12345654321 etc etc etc.

I like to do 10 miles total distance. I will do 1 mile to get warm then two pretty quick miles, then I will start the fartlek portion of the workout, which usually lasts for about 4 miles total. Trust me, the last 3 miles after than kicks your ass.

I think a lot of people do fartleks wrong and the recovery after their pickups is very slow, like you are recovering on the track at a jog. If I average 6 minute pace for the whole run, my fast portion is around 5 minute pace, and my recovery portion is around 7 minute pace.

The possibilities are literally endless.

The best sort of fartlek, in my humble opinion, is "Continuous Velocity Increase"

Run about 1 hour, on the road, starting about 7 minutes per mile and working down to 5 minutes per mile, increasing 10 seconds per mile every mile or a little bit every km, if you go by kilometers,

Then hit the track immediately after the hour for 2km very fast, or 3x1000 fast.

In high school we did this workout to prepare us for tempo runs later on in the season. Its short (21 min.) but it really prepares your lactate acid system.

10-10-20-20 workout

10 sec. hard

10 sec. at normal running pace

20 sec. fast

10 sec. at normal running pace

Increace by 10 seconds until you reach 90 sec. (comfortably tough). After the 90 sec. interval, work down by 10 seconds - the recovery equals the run.

Obviously this workout can be done by any high schooler, but if you run the fast intervals tough, this will help anyone.

the mono fartlek from "Run Tough"

the recovery is done at a 'float', so not easy.

2x90 (90 float) 4x60 (60 float) 4x30 (30 float) 4x15(15 float) these are seconds by the way. i did it a couple of days ago..a killer. when u get to the 30's you're like, no problem...just wait.