Fartlek? What’s not to love? This isn’t a traditional fartlek in that it is structured, where a fartlek would ordinarily be very spontaneous. But for people like me who can’t handle spontaneity in their runs, this is a great one! It’s also great if you struggle with the constant pace of a tempo run because this will give you the same training benefit but it has built in recovery periods.
You run each interval (in minutes) fast and then you have a jogging recovery for 1 minute between each interval. So it would be:
2:00 Fast
1:00 Recovery
3:00 Fast
1:00 Recovery
4:00 Fast
1:00 Recovery
6:00 Fast
1:00 Recovery
4:00 Fast
1:00 Recovery
3:00 Fast
1:00 Recovery
2:00 Fast
1:00 Recovery
So it will take you a total of 31:00 to complete.
Ideally you want the fast intervals to be faster in the shorter intervals than they would be in the longer intervals – you are aiming for something that you are going to be able to sustain for the whole interview and have a jogging recovery, rather than a walking recovery. This can take awhile to adjust to and figure out what your pace should be.
If you are newer to running – you can use an interval like (2,3,4,3,2) until you build up your endurance a bit more.
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