Fartlek
What’s behind the silly name?
If you’ve been a runner for any amount of time you’ll inevitably hear your running friends sniggering about fartlek runs. What are they and how do you use them in your training.
Fartlek is a Swedish term that means ‘Speed Play’. The Swedish coach came up with these workouts in the 1940’s to help his team compete against the Finns. Come on, who doesn’t remember the great Paavo Nurmi? The Flying Finn? He’s on the Finnish currency now I think.
Like all the other buzzwords of running fartlek means different things to different people. I’ll break it down for you so that you can choose for yourself whether this is something that you want to play with in your training.
The original Swede coach came up with these workouts to get his distance runners to mix in some speedwork with their long runs. And that is basically all that fartlek workouts are, working some speedwork into your longer runs.
Most of us realize that you can’t just run more miles to get faster. You have to do some speedwork. The fartlek workout incorporates a mix of both so that you recruit more muscle fiber types.
There are some real advantages to throwing in some surges into your mid-to-long workouts. Not only does it recruit different muscle types, it accustoms your system to changing paces mid run and recovering from a hard effort mid run.
These are things that happen in actual races. C’mon, who hasn’t gotten carried away chasing someone down in the middle of a race? Or dropping a surge in to shake some persistent hanger on? Fartlek workouts let you practice that.
Like everything else there are different takes on the fartlek workout. In its basic, purest form you simply try to throw in some surges during your run when you feel like it. For example, let’s say you’re going out for a one-hour fartlek run. First you would warm up for 10 minutes or so. Then you would drop in five to ten surges sprinkled throughout the middle 40 minutes. Then you would warm down.
How long a surge? Well that’s really up to you. The standard length of a surge during a basic fartlek run is ninety one to two minutes. So for me that would be like a 400 – 600 meter surge.
How fast? In your basic fartlek it’s really how fast you feel like running, but it works out to around a 5K effort or pace. If your surges are longer you might want to go a little easier.
The mystical nature of the traditional fartlek is that you aren’t supposed to have a set interval for these surges, you just do them when you feel like it. It’s supposed to be ‘play’. Same with the effort. You run a fast and a far as you feel like.
Of course, you know me; I’m way too tightly wrapped for this kind of airy-fairy instruction set. Seriously? What does ‘when you feel like it’ mean? I feel like sitting on the couch, drinking beer, eating butter soaked popcorn and watching SportsCenter – but that’s not going to get me anywhere in my training.
What I do is drop in a ninety second interval every five minutes. One and one-half minute surge, three and a half minute recovery. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to sleep.
Another great way to gamify the fartlek is to pick out landmarks. Find something a quarter mile away, like a telephone pole and run to it for example. You get the picture.
A great fartlek workout for kids or beginners if you run along a road with utility poles is to run fast between every other pole. I say beginners because these poles are only one hundred and twenty five feet apart in the US and you would need about seven of them to get a quarter mile surge in. But it’s a great starting point for someone to throw in some speedwork. I used to use this with the kids when I coached youth soccer.
Some coaches will use the basic fartlek framework more as an interval workout. They will have fartleks that look a lot like the step up runs that I described recently. With surges as long as 7-8 minutes. They will have ladders of surges. Starting the run with long surges and stepping down into shorter, faster surges as the run progresses, or the same thing in reverse.
That hardly sounds like play to me. These types of fartleks are more like traditional, hardcore, prescriptive tempo training.
Why do you care? When do you use fartlek?
First, fartlek runs for beginners or those of you easing into spedwork for a training campaign for the first time. It’s a lightweight, less scary way to ease into tempo and speed training. After you do a couple weeks of these your legs won’t be so shocked when you attempt some more structured tempo training.
Second, during the meat of your training you can mix in some fartlek training as one of your weekly tempo training runs. These might have some longer, sustained surges and be a bit more prescriptive.
Third, as a way to keep your legs from getting bored during a long run. Sometimes when you get tired during along run it’s not because your legs are tired, they’re just bored with the same pace for hours on end. Throw in a ninety second surge every once in awhile to wake them up.
Fourth, during the ‘rest’ weeks or ‘down’ weeks on your training cycles as a way to keep the legs awake, but not over stress them. Again, this is basically a ‘light’ tempo workout.
Finally, in the last few weeks leading into your goal race. This is a period where, ‘the hay is in the barn’ and you don’t need to build anymore. But, it’s a bad idea to do absolutely no tempo. Instead of hard tempo training you throw in some easier fartlek workouts to keep the race edge sharp and remind your legs what it feels like to go faster.
That is it my friends. Like all simple things the fartlek workout can be overcomplicated but at its core it is still just ‘speed play’ during a longer run.
Go out and get your play on today. You don’t need a four hundred meter oval to run speed. You can mix it into any old run, whenever you feel like it, and that’s a fartlek.