Fartlek is not tempo.
A tempo run is done at approximately the pace one could hold during an all-out effort lasting one hour - and lasts anything from 15 to 25 minutes, normally.
This is the basic definition but then people added variety to it. Like with Fartlek that originally had no pre-defined times and nowadays is rarely done without them.
The truth is that there are ,according to which coach, several different types. While Jack Daniels is simply just a 20 minute run at Latic threshold pace, Mcmillian has hour long "tempo" runs. It is a movable definition.
All I know is that whatever tempo runs are, they are important
Ha! Man, I remember when all we did was run.
If we were doing a 5 miler we ran faster than if we were doing 12. We didnt label the run.
A "fast finish long run" that was usually because someone got froggy and jumped, so everybody started pushing the last few miles.
LikeBekeleButSlow wrote:
What were the four answers? My answer: any training run you intend to do at goal race pace.
Garbage
As for the rest of the nonsense most people confuse tempo pace with a tempo run
It's the new fartlek - people changing the original meaning
I always do a progression run starting at a recovery pace. I then move into an easy pace for a while. After that I move through that indescribable pace where you just run your normal effort and everybody says that pace produces no training benefit. From there I move into steady state pace. I work down to tempo pace before finishing off the run with a short distance at race effort.
I have no doubt moving through every single conceived pace every day is the absolute best way to train.
On my XC team apparently it is when you have a goal pace or time in mind, then fail miserably at it... You shuffle your feet around for about a half hour and then say, whewww, got in a nice tempo run.
always liked what Kevin Beck wrote many years ago:
"The term "tempo run" is to distance running in the ’90s what Studio 54 was to ’70s decadence: Tossing it around separates the wannabes from the in-crowd. It’s a key staple in the training diet, to be sure, but very few seem to know just what the recipe calls for."
http://www.runnersworld.com/workouts/what-exactly-tempo-run?page=single
Dunno if anyone already said it but for sprinters tempo runs are sprints at around 70% of max for extensive tempo and at around 80% for intensive tempo.
Basic Tempo Runner wrote:
Fartlek is not tempo.
A tempo run is done at approximately the pace one could hold during an all-out effort lasting one hour - and lasts anything from 15 to 25 minutes, normally.
This is the basic definition but then people added variety to it. Like with Fartlek that originally had no pre-defined times and nowadays is rarely done without them.
Not really... "Comfortably hard" is the basic definition. Your definition is from Jack Daniel's but his definition is a bit fast, and his paces also change based on the amount of time you run.
the honest answer wrote:
On my XC team apparently it is when you have a goal pace or time in mind, then fail miserably at it... You shuffle your feet around for about a half hour and then say, whewww, got in a nice tempo run.
Haha, I forgot all about this. In my team, we'd run some road races over the summer to test our fitness, and if it went bad you just say "but I just tempo'd it." Yeah right, buddy.
Hardloper wrote:
Not really... "Comfortably hard" is the basic definition. Your definition is from Jack Daniel's but his definition is a bit fast, and his paces also change based on the amount of time you run.
The two variations I like and that seem to be fairly 'correct' are the 'comfortably hard' and 'threshold pace' descriptions.
But, how hard threshold is I think depends on the athlete.
Oldsub4 said he didn't like the tempo run at all, and said it 'churned his guts' or something.
Personally I feel like threshold pace is really easy and have no problem with doing a tempo run, but I also have a pretty bad threshold pace that rarely improves...
Well technically, McMillan calls the "one-hour" runs "steady state", and not "tempo".McMillan's "tempo runs" are 15-30 minutes (at between 40 minute to 75 minute race pace)http://www.mcmillanrunning.com/index.php/articlePages/page/21I like McMillan's "12 workout" descriptions, because it gives a detailed description to a broad variety of training paces, ranging from recover/easy to speed/sprint. For "stamina training", he describes:- steady state (1 hour +/-)- tempo runs (20 minutes +/-)- tempo intervals (2 miles +/-)- cruise intervals (3-8 minutes)The longer the workout, the slower it is, and vice-versa.Curiously missing from his "12 workouts" is another stamina building workout he likes: progression runs. Here he describes 3 kinds:http://www.mcmillanrunning.com/articlePages/article/6
Truth is.... wrote:
The truth is that there are ,according to which coach, several different types. While Jack Daniels is simply just a 20 minute run at Latic threshold pace, Mcmillian has hour long "tempo" runs. It is a movable definition.
This quote came from Kevin Beck in 1999:http://www.runnersworld.com/workouts/what-exactly-tempo-run
no one does wrote:
even seasoned, top-notch competitors either don’t know or don’t care what a tempo run really is. This is surprising, because the term is clearly and simply defined by coaches and exercise physiologists. And this is not a matter of nit-picking semantics; doing a tempo run incorrectly greatly compromises its training benefits.
When I first started to review this message board about 9 years ago I had no idea what was meant by a tempo run. Now I understand why. A tempo run, like running itself, is very individual or personal.
The dictionary says that tempo means pace or rate of activity.
I trained with Hungarian Coach Mihaly Igloi in the mid 1960s Every run we made from 100 yards on up had a tempo and he used the term repeatedly.
He had 2 leg actions (swing and speed) and many tempos such as easy, fresh, good, very good, hard, very hard, all out etc. He once called out to me in the middle of a marathon race I was running to switch to very hard speed tempo for 60 yards.
Coach Igloi's athletes set many World, Hungarian, U.S. and Greek Records.
This!
the honest answer wrote:
On my XC team apparently it is when you have a goal pace or time in mind, then fail miserably at it... You shuffle your feet around for about a half hour and then say, whewww, got in a nice tempo run.
LikeBekeleButSlow wrote:
What were the four answers? My answer: any training run you intend to do at goal race pace.
So Manzano and Centro do their "tempos" at about 3:50 mile pace?
Umm...
Wrong.
Tempo PACE is ROUGHLY what you can maintain for an hour at race effort, and therefore slower than 10k pace and faster than half marathon pace for basically all of of us.
A tempo RUN could be anything from 20 minutes (probably going to be closer to 10k pace than HM pace) to 40 minutes or more (although as they get longer than that it is getting closer to a RACE EFFORT if your pace is truly in a tempo range).
If the pace is much slower than HM pace, it is NO LONGER A TEMPO RUN. It might be a steady state run or a marathon pace run, or a variety of other things, but it is NOT a tempo.
Basic Tempo Runner wrote:
A tempo run is done at approximately the pace one could hold during an all-out effort lasting one hour - and lasts anything from 15 to 25 minutes, normally.
You're right about pace but wrong about time. See my post above. 15 minutes at 60-minute race pace is not much of a workout.
There is and never has been a strict definition; anything that includes, one run, timed, a specific pace, simulates a race will do.
A simple tempo might be 1200m at mile race pace.
yours is the dumbest of all wrote:
Tempo PACE is ROUGHLY what you can maintain for an hour at race effort, and therefore slower than 10k pace and faster than half marathon pace for basically all of of us.
A tempo RUN could be anything from 20 minutes (probably going to be closer to 10k pace than HM pace) to 40 minutes or more (although as they get longer than that it is getting closer to a RACE EFFORT if your pace is truly in a tempo range).
If the pace is much slower than HM pace, it is NO LONGER A TEMPO RUN. It might be a steady state run or a marathon pace run, or a variety of other things, but it is NOT a tempo.
No one has used this definition for a tempo run. Daniels suggests 60 minute all-out pace for a 20 minute tempo but slower as the time increases. By 40 minutes it would be close to marathon pace. It should never be a race effort, nowhere close. However, many consider even Daniels' suggestions to be too fast.