Let’s talk about Fartlek

Why?  What’s the point of ‘speed-play’?

The concept of fartlek came from the Swedish runners of my generation.  Most distance runners at the time trained at specific structured paces and distances.  What the Swedes figured out was that races don’t happen at structured paces and distances.

Fartleks are also a great way to work some speed work into your normal training runs without the performance pressure associated with intervals or other structured speed workouts.  The fartlek is inserted into the run playfully in such a way to allow you to enjoy the speed.  Frankly, you might not even know you’re doing speed work.

One of my favorite workouts for getting new runners used to speed work is called a ‘telephone pole’. This is an example of a fartlek.  You go out for a run on any street in the world and they will probably have some sort of landmarks.  Maybe they are cross streets.  Maybe they are train tracks. Maybe they are bus stop shelters, or even big trees and rocks!

Where I live in suburbia there are telephone poles every 100 feet or so.  For beginners who want to play with speed work just run hard from one pole to the next.  If you’re feeling spunky you can do two or three or four poles worth and make it longer.  You can play with the effort and speed and form.

You can do a fartlek just by siting a landmark of some sort a couple hundred meters ahead and picking up your pace until you attain it.  Easy Peasy.  It’s a bit like that old children’s game ‘I’ll race you to that tree!’

Fartlek can be structured.  A structured 40 minute fartlek might be warm up for ten minutes, run hard for two minutes, jog easy for two minutes, run hard for three minutes, etc.  You could program the whole thing into your watch.

In the true spirit of ‘speed play’ most fartlek are unstructured. You go out for your run and once you are warmed up you throw in some surges of two to three minutes every once in a while as you feel like it.

In addition to speed work fartlek also teaches you what it feels like to vary your pace in a run.  This, coincidently, is exactly what happens in races.

Fartlek teach you to run hard and recover mid-run.  This is a great race tool.  In a race you will have situations where you will want to throw in a surge to pass a competitor or respond to a competitors push.  The Swedes figured out that fartlek was a way to simulate these race tactics.

It’s not only running fast that you learn. It’s running slow or controlled to recover from the effort.  It’s really about variety and play.

I always like to relate workouts to race specific situations and the cause and effect, but fartlek is really about playing with your paces and efforts throughout the run in a non-structured way.  Frankly it’s this variety that can make a fartlek a welcome respite from structured training, but still give you some race benefit.

Sometimes group runs or club runs can turn into fartlek with different members of the pack pushing the pace playfully throughout the run.  It’s a game.  Try to drop your friends on an uphill or a downhill and see how they respond.   Yell out loud when you do it! Turn running into play – like you’re a bunch of 10-year-olds on the playground.

When I’m home I tend to run the same 7 mile trail loop.  It’s quite hilly.  To mix things up I’ll play with the hills.  I might do my fartlek surges on the uphills one day, the down hills the next and the flats on another.  This keeps it fun and playful and keeps me from getting in a rut.

It confuses the dog, but it keeps the runs fun and interesting.  It gives you something to anticipate.  Something to look forward to.

When you do these surges, since it is play, you can do them as hard or easy as you like.  For me I’ll typically accelerate into a ‘tempo’ pace that is maybe 75-80% of my effort level.  This isn’t all out.  I’m not sprinting from one point to another then dying at the end.  I’m accelerating into tempo effort then decelerating back into an easy pace at the end.

In terms of heart rate zones you would be starting at a base of zone2 then accelerating up into zone 3 or 4 then returning to zone 2.  In terms of pace your surge is probably 30 seconds per mile faster than your marathon goal pace.

These are guidelines.  Listen to your machine. If you get caught up in looking at your watch, or worse, programming the fartlek into your watch, you are doing it wrong.  That’s not a fartlek, that’s an interval workout.

There is another version of speed play where you do the intervals at a zone 5 or ‘speed’ effort level.  These I will typically do on the road (my trails are pretty technical and don’t really lend themselves to this kind of speed).  If you do true speed intervals you might only surge for 20 – 30 seconds.  This pace might be a full minute faster than your marathon goal pace.

Again the protocol is to accelerate into the speed, hold it for 30 seconds or so, focusing on pace and form, then decelerate to a recovery pace.  Make sure you’re warmed up.  Recover for a minute or so – until your heart rate comes down to zone 2, then do it again.

Fartlek is Swedish for speed-play, but for us we can use it as a stress free way to sneak some quality speed work into our runs.

Let’s face it, running is supposed to be fun. Let your inner child off the lease once in a while and play.