what tempo pace to use

I believe you would use your current pace eg 10K or HM for tempo and shorter intervals eg 400-800 for goal pace. I don't think tempos were ever designed to be @ goal pace.

Put away ALL calculators and charts, and run at a pace that feels comfortably hard. As you get in better shape, tempo pace will get longer and faster without any increase in effort.

+1

Tempo is a feeling not a pace.

Speaker of hard truths (the real 1) wrote:

Put away ALL calculators and charts, and run at a pace that feels comfortably hard. As you get in better shape, tempo pace will get longer and faster without any increase in effort.

This

Start by running your race MP and move towards your HM pace, stay comfortably hard, especially at the start of a training cycle. Try monitoring you HR for reference.

Thanks everyone,

Much appreciated.

What do you mean by tempo? Do you mean anaerobic threshold? If so plug a recent race time into a calculator and go from there.

The McMillan calculator gives you a range. On a treadmill I always start a tempo run at the slow end of the range and speed up.

I wonder about ideal tempo pace as well.

My current approach is (after 20min warm up) to run 20mins at the lactate threshold pace estimated by my garmin.

There is no "tempo pace". Tempo is a huge spectrum of a variety of different paces, from lactate threshold all the way to marathon pace.

My threshold for example is at 5:50/mile, but since I'm a fast-twitch runner I never do 20 min continuous threshold runs at this pace. I do longer intervals from 1-2 miles at this pace and run my steady tempo runs (started at 4 miles, built to 6 miles) at Marathon pace (~6:15).