Should I skip my tempo if my legs are sore/tired?

Just do a progression run instead.

tempotuesday wrote:

Title. Have a tempo scheduled today, but a session a couple days ago still has me feeling muscularly tired/sore. Should I take today as a recovery and do it tomorrow, or suck it up and push through it today?

Listen to your body. Do the warmup, some strides and then decide if it is worth doing a workout. I would rather push the workout back a day than kill myself in December. If you do push back the workout, do a fartlek tomorrow and get in a good long run on Sunday. If you don't recover tomorrow, bag the workout and run easy. It is too early to be beating yourself up.

Oh poor little thing. You seem tired.....want to relax?

If you don't learn to train on tired legs, you'll never be any good. Just the way it works, the sooner you get used to it the better!

Just a Dude

Listen to your body. Recovery run.

Yea id definitely rather kill yourself in the spring when racing starts not in base training...

A little fatigue never hurt anyone. Get in a solid warm up and do the tempo. Don't destroy it, then take recovery very seriously over the next few days.

Take the extra easy day and do it tomorrow. It happens sometimes.

Train to race. Race only on race days.

There have been guys who ran only 1 mile on recovery days.

It's hard to bring them back once they are injured, sick, or staleness has set in.

Heck I'm for 1 mile runs for the rest of the week if that's what it takes.

You’re supposed to be a little tired most of the time. Sharp pains are a problem, but a little fatigue is what you’re supposed to feel. If you’re feeling fresh and rested on most days, you’re not training hard enough.

Do a good warmup and run your tempo. Don’t time it, just go by feel.

Do like Brother Colms athletes do: tired is ok to do a workout, very tired is not.

Yes that is one good solution. The other is to do a cutdown but only time the last mile.

No one knows why people do the things they do wrote:

Train to race. Race only on race days.

There have been guys who ran only 1 mile on recovery days.

It's hard to bring them back once they are injured, sick, or staleness has set in.

Heck I'm for 1 mile runs for the rest of the week if that's what it takes.

THanks for that largely irrelevant post

Lydiard would advise easy aerobic runs until you feel better.

Rest and recovery is likely the most important session in any training program

Avoidance of injury is critical to a successful season

Depends imo. If this is just a single bad day in a string of days where you've been feeling really great then you should probably push through. If this has been a common feeling during the past few weeks then it's probably a sign you're overdoing it and you should move the workout to tomorrow.

Listen to your body wrote:

Listen to your body. Do the warmup, some strides and then decide if it is worth doing a workout.

I would agree, if this was a true "workout" and the OP described anything concerning. If he posted "I may have a mild hamstring strain; should I do 2x600 at 800 pace, I would say to adapt the plan.

But a tempo is something you should be able to do even starting on "tired" legs. The OP isn't talking about injury or even niggles, just normal training effects. Do the tempo mileage volume and effort as planned, and if it you are really slogging, do it as cruise intervals (e.g. 4xMile instead of 4 miles straight).

If you are not recovering in time for hard days, the correct response if not to drop your workout days. The correct response is to look at your recovery! Have you run too hard since the last workout? This is a typical error. Have you not stretched, eaten, slept etc properly? Also common.

As long as you are not racing your workout days doing unreasonable Strava-hero workouts (and we all know the difference between those and normal workouts), adapt your recovery days around the hard days, don't adapt your hard days to suit your crappy recovery.

This sound advice. Excellent post!

Skipping your tempo would be even harder on your body than running it.