Part 3-A: Fartleks

Fartlek Runs

One of the most important types of training run for early in a training cycle (and definitely the one with the most fun name) is the fartlek run.  It also happens to be one of the easiest "hard" workouts available.  In its barest, simplest form, a fartlek run is one in which you run short, fast bursts, then go at an easy jog to recover, then repeat.  It doesn't have to be organized in any way - you can structure it if you like, or just pick a distance and go hard when you feel like it, recover as long as you need, and go again.  A key focus here is form, working to keep good running form while running fast begins to ingrain that good form into your muscle memory so that when you fatigue later in a race, your form doesn't go all to hell and get you injured.

Fartlek work is good early on because it allows you to put quality miles on your legs without the kind of stresses that come from more intense workouts like tempo and interval running.  At the cellular level, the short bursts of speed are mostly anaerobic, stimulating your fast twitch muscle fibers and forcing your body to use both the aerobic and anaerobic metabolic processes.  It is probably important to note that while most people refer to running as either anaerobic or aerobic, it is of course almost always a mixture of the two.  Even when going very hard, you aren't using anaerobic metabolism entirely, your body just can't sustain it for more than 200m or 300m.  But for simplicity here, and to remove as much of the sciencey-ness of things, I will treat the two as polar opposites, black and white, with a clear line drawn between.

At the whole body level, you begin to feel the burn - in both your legs and your lungs.  Your body doesn't like the anaerobic pathway.  It prefers to process energy with oxygen.  When you suddenly push things, your breathing speeds up to try and keep up - which it can't.  You may feel a little burn in your leg muscles as waste products begin to build up.  Then you slow down, your breathing catches up, and those waste products are flushed away faster than they can accumulate.  All of this happens fast, so fast you don't realize it - you just know that you are uncomfortable, then you're not.  The body always seeks balance (the internal balance of the body is called homeostasis, and your body's primary goal is to maintain this), and uses feedback as a way to get it - you run harder, your body wants more air to keep itself aerobic so it speeds up your breathing, your legs burn with the accumulation of wastes until you are forced to slow down, when the burn goes away the body knows to slow your breathing back down.  Tim Noakes theorized that there is some kind of central governor process in your brain that uses these feedback systems to regulate homeostasis - see, not every good idea came from the Kenyans.  Noakes is a South African, and was also one of the pioneers in researching hydration during exercise and the importance of electrolyte balance.  Smart guy.

So the questions you must have are, "why do I care about all that science mumbo jumbo?", "how do I design a fartlek workout and what kind of improvement will I see because of it?", and in my mind, the most important, "where in the world did the name 'fartlek' come from?".

Why do you care?  Most of you probably don't.  People don't really care "how" a computer works, only that it does.  But for some of us, we can't help but be curious about everything...

How do you design a fartlek workout?  Easy, without designing it.  Fartlek runs can easily be done by feel, just going out and running based on when you feel like speeding up and slowing down.  They're a good way to ease into harder workouts, since the lack of structure allows them to easily be done on the roads and they typically don't have goals and targets like other workouts.  I like to do 4 or 5 miles, with maybe 10 or 12 speed ups during the run of 20-30 seconds, running at around the pace I'd use for a one mile race.  The other fartlek workout I like is loosely based on the original fartlek workout:

1 mile warm up
1 mile run at 5k race pace
1/2 mile jogged recovery
3 1/2 miles of jogging with 10-15 seconds bursts of speed, with the last 1/4 mile as fast as possible
1 mile cool down

For those keeping score, that's 7 miles.  Where did this crazy workout come from?  It's related to the next question.

Where did the name fartlek come from?  Sweden, it turns out.  The Swedish cross country teams were getting hammered by the Finns back in the 1920's, and a coach named Gösta Holmér devised a plan that involved training portions at both faster and slower than race pace to simultaneously train speed and endurance.  He was one of the pioneers in running training (and another non-Kenyan who's ideas I like).  The name itself means "speed play".  My 7 mile fartlek is based on his original workout for the Swedish cross country team.


I've deliberately left hill running out of this post, saving it for the next one.  I have little to say about it, but had much to say here and didn't want to make this any longer than it already is.  As for my own training, I haven't ran since Monday due to a stomach bug.  I have high hopes for tomorrow morning, but I'm deciding day-to-day.