Tempo Run Pace?

Once a week do:

Just run hard for 20-30 minutes.

Just run steady for 45-60 minutes.

Just do a progression run whenever you feel good.

Learn to run by feel.

A tempo run is a comfortably hard run which you can run by feel.

Please disregard any subsequent posts pointing you to some VDOT table or Tinman equation or Macmillan calculator. Tempo is a feeling.

OlympicHopefull wrote:

How do you determine tempo run pace? Im hoping to go sub 5 and 10:28 for the two mile. What would a tempo run effort for that? And how long and how often should I do them?

The pace would be based on current fitness and not what you hope to do.

Screw it, I like calculators. Plug your PR's into the Daniels calculator and experiment a bit. Common guidelines are your mile PR + 1 minute (likely a bit too fast for you right now) and your 5K PR pace + 25 seconds/mile.

Start out running for a mile at this pace, then gradually add a minute or two at pace each week, breaking it up with a couple minutes jogging if you need to as the tempo run gets longer. Since you're heading into track season, stick with the 20-minute tempo rather than the longer (and slightly slower) variations for now.

I know that many say to "run by feel". Yes, when doing fartleks, tempos and progression runs, more experienced runners can do this very effectively. However, a lot of young runners do not know how to adjust their effort and pace. Having times to guide them, will gradually help them learn pacing and eventually they will learn to do these runs by feel. I understand the posters saying "just run by feel", or "just run comfortably hard", but with newer runners they need some pace examples to give them a little guidance. Knowing pace is extremely important for a runner, but it takes time to learn.

In my opinion most runners (especially newer/younger ones) try to do tempos too fast. My advice would be to use Daniels to calculate your Marathon pace and progress down from there. Now, you want to use a recent race time, not your goal time or a PR from last season when you were fit so going by your goals I’ll just use 11:00 2 mile which gives us 6:27 pace. The way i like to do it is run 2/3-3/4 of the tempo steady at this pace then subtly accelerate (not kicking!) so it might look like 3 miles going 6:27, 6:27, 6:15. Then, next time you can go for that average for the first section and maybe extend a bit say 3.5 miles at 6:23, 6:23, 6:12, 3:05 and on and on.

Agree with the other poster who said not to bother with the longer tempos -unless- you’re running higher mileage, say 60+ mpw then a 10k tempo at marathon pace every 2 or 3 weeks is nice to break it up and build endurance.

I agree that the better way to learn tempo pace is to come at it from the slow side. This is very good advice.

Tempo shouldn't ever end in a desperate effort. You may have a moment somewhere in the first 1/3 or around halfway that you feel like you are working pretty hard, which is fine. But it should not make you question whether you can finish strong. You should have 100% confidence of a strong finish when you are halfway done. Personally the final mile, while feeling the hardest in a way, also feels the easiest for me, because I'm fully warmed up, HR is fully up, I'm totally in rhythm, so I just pound it out nice and smooth and strong.

Of course if you follow his advice then I wouldn't expect to even feel like it's that difficult at any point. It'll really teach you to ease into the pace and learn to run tempo pace feeling strong. But at some point when you run a tempo on-pace from the start, you may feel a little hump to get over early on like I said. Your body will get used to the effort and be ready to do what you're asking of it.

If you start tempos too fast, especially when you're not used to running them, it's gonna be an exercise in frustration and failure. If you can't help but start them too fast, then do not do continuous tempos at first. When you realize you've started too hot and you're questioning if you can finish strong, insert a recovery jog and then resume tempo effort with more control (and more warmed up, so you should be able to get in rhythm easier).

Start out adding a minute to your 3200 pace, and maybe get down to 50 seconds off. Tempo runs are generally inferior to thresholds or cruise intervals in my experience though, I'd say doing threshold miles or cruise interval 1000s is going to be a better workout and a little easier to manage for a high schooler.