Fartlek

Everything I've posted til now has been back story but tonight I ran my first  FARTLEK so I couldn't very well pass that up. I joined a training group, more on that later, and tonight they had us run a fartlek. (How many times can I say that? And did you snicker?) A fartlek is a Swedish term meaning "speed play" (look it up on Wikipedia, I did.) Basically its a form of interval running combining aerobic and anaerobic runs.  Tonight was also a timed run, 45 minutes, out and back - meaning not in a loop. So at 22:30 we turned around on our route and headed back to the start. Here's where the fartlek came in. After a 15 minute warm-up run you kicked it up a bit for the next three minutes , quickened your pace. Then at the end of three minutes you slowed back down to your regular running pace for two minutes. This three/two combo was repeated four times total then you ran at your normal pace for the remainder of the run, or about 10 more minutes. To this point my average pace has been 11:40/mile but with the fartlek I was down to closer to 11:00/mile. Practically 30 seconds per mile faster. And it wasn't that hard to do or maintain (except on hills; you already know how I feel about hills).

In the beginning I had been running too fast at the start of a run thereby eventually running out of steam before completing the run. I've learned to pace myself at the beginning and have since found a good steady pace at 11:40, but now I've learned that I can actually push myself a bit in the middle and be able to maintain through the end. Tonight's run was a little over 4 miles. I'm pretty proud of the running I did tonight.

Go fartlek!