Explaining "tempo" pace to your athletes.

Like easy running, it is a feel, not a pace. Just run comfortably hard for x amount of miles.

what are you talking about? wrote:

Like easy running, it is a feel, not a pace. Just run comfortably hard for x amount of miles.

Yes, I've explained it that way for years but what I've found when I actually ride along with them is that they will start too fast, slow in the middle, then blitz the end of the run. To them, it probably all feels about the same but their paces are all over the place.

No matter how many ways you explain it...when it's done in a group it usually becomes a race...or close to it. I don't know what the answer is. Although when I was coaching in high school...if I could see that kids were starting a workout way too fast...which is usually pretty obvious...I'd blow the whistle and have them start over...just so they didn't blow the whole workout in the first minute or two. I made sure to stop before they'd even gone 200m. Seemed to work OK.

That's a very good and accurate explanation! Nice blog post.

For getting the kids to do it, I think finding out the right effort/pace for a group and then pacing them on a bike might help, I doubt most will understand the science you used.

I go with the Pledge of Allegiance test. Maybe 8-10 minutes in and thereafter, you should be able to get in a clause or two of the Pledge, but not be able to recite more than that comfortably. Said a different way, able to talk, but not able to converse.

I never do group tempos with my athletes. Use group sessions when you want your runners to push each other.

CoachB wrote:

I've struggled for years to come up with a great way to explain tempo pace to my athletes. This summer I've been working on some of my own pace charts and ways of simplifying all of the different terminology that gets thrown around in books and on the internet.

Take a look and see what you think. I'm of course open to constructive criticism and willing to answer questions. Yes, I know that it's a big ask to expect kids to read through all of this stuff, but my best ones do read what I post then explain it to the other kids.

https://hughsoncc.blogspot.com/2019/07/threshold-training.html

It is best to go off of feel on this one. "Pace" is counter-intuitive since threshold really is a moving target depending on the many variables out there (fatigue, sickness, terrain, weather, current fitness, etc). It is a tough concept to wrap your head around with HS runners. In the words of Bob Larsen: "You can talk, but you don't want to." I think that's a good indicator for most.

I think saying run a 10 miler all out then stop them 3-4 miles in.

Great post, write up and comments!

Somewhere between 10 mile and half marathon pace, ie the pace you could race at for 1 hour.

For myself, I've found it helpful to ease into tempo. I usually start at around marathon pace, and then up the effort until I'm touching that fine line. I think of it as "approaching it from below."

I agree with the observation that tempo runs are easier to execute correctly when alone, for the same reason that one races faster in a pack. There are time where you want to be pulled to the edge of your own limits, and times when you want to stay right at the best place for you.

Ilike wrote:

I think saying run a 10 miler all out then stop them 3-4 miles in.

Would certainly work once.

I had our kids do the first one on the track so we could monitor pace, since I had a decent idea of their target items. Once they had the idea, we moved to grass.

I am a recently retired high school coach so my perspective comes from working with many novices to the sport.

I start by telling them the tempo run should be at a pace they can hold for 5-6 miles but becomes tough in the final mile or two. Starting to hang on toward the end. For me, progressive runs are the antidote for starting too fast and falling off. How quickly they progress and how far they run is manipulated over time to meet their fitness and needs. Finally, I stop them 2-3 times in tempo runs during their learning phase to check heart rates. Not only does this help them with learning paces/efforts but the minute break is needed for many to regain control over the effort without feeling defeated and like they are falling off. They do not think of the pulse-check as a break from the effort.

What i do is have them do a mile time trial day one and add one minute and thats the pace we shoot for to start. I try to keep them close to that pace along with telling them how that feels but most high school kids especially new ones don’t understand what that really means or feels like so thats why i watch their pace closely. Helps to have a pace chart for easy math. I have kids who from day one do it perfectly and others who never figure it out lol

This summer for us

1st tempo effort kids fell apart

2nd effort we didn 4x1 mile on the track sticking to predicted paces in the 80-85% range. They said it felt easy

3rd effort of the summer was a 4K then a 2k. They said that felt easy also.

Next week they’ll go back out on the roads.

Kvothe wrote:

Somewhere between 10 mile and half marathon pace, ie the pace you could race at for 1 hour.

A very small percentage of high school kids can go farther than 10 miles in an hour, even at max effort. And most high school kids don't run ten-mile races or half-marathon races.

So this probably would not be a help to most of them.

This is why tempo intervals are better to monitor a workout like this with young athletes

lease wrote:

Kvothe wrote:

Somewhere between 10 mile and half marathon pace, ie the pace you could race at for 1 hour.

A very small percentage of high school kids can go farther than 10 miles in an hour, even at max effort. And most high school kids don't run ten-mile races or half-marathon races.

So this probably would not be a help to most of them.

This is very true! On top of that, most high school kids are super under developed aerobically. Many of my newbies would struggle to do 10k in an hour. This is why we started doing a 6 minute run for distance to approximate vVO2 max at the beginning of the training cycle. Even the weakest kids can usually put out effort for 6 minutes

During the last track season, we only used that test to give the kids an idea of how to do CV reps. It worked so well that I learned how to use excel an created the pace charts I have linked in the blog post.

For workouts, I group the kids based on how they did on the 6 minute test. For instance, during the first week of summer, all of my projected varsity boys went between 1800-1850 meters on the test. I have them use the chart for 1800. My next group back uses the paces for 1700, etc.

When we did threshold miles a couple of weeks ago, only the fastest group did miles. The next group back did 5x1200, the other groups did 4x1200. This is because I didn’t want any of the reps to be too much longer than 6 minutes.

Great *practical* stuff here! With girls/women, I also had considerable success with 1000s--by accident, as the concepts of "cruise intervals" and "tempo running" were not widespread back then. But it's the same idea of not having the reps be too time-lengthy.

[By coincidence, I spoke with Jack Daniels years later and he talked about how he'd had success at Cortland by using ~1,000m repeats over rolling terrain--which is exactly what we'd been doing.]

On an earlier thread someone spoke of having athletes run 5min repeats on the track, to get the feel for proper tempo pace: When they come around after the first lap you can give them precise feedback on their pace; when the five minutes are up, you blow a whistle and they come back to the starting point. I'd really want them to have a good feel for tempo pace before turning them loose on the roads.