Besides a funny word, Fartlek is a great training method and means “speed-play” in Swedish. This has been around for close to 50 years and is used as an effective way to increase a runner’s speed and endurance.
Personally, I believe in incorporating this method, and bring it into my regular training to help improve my personal training times and goals.
Running a Fartlek involves changing your pace throughout the run by integrating intense sprints, followed by a recovery run slightly below your usual running pace.
Like any other run, before starting a fartlek you will want to make sure you have done a proper warm up of at least 10 minutes to make sure your muscles are loose to handle the accelerations, and the same holds true for the cool down. Neglecting the warm-up/cool down, you can risk having some very sore muscles the following day, and if this is new to your regimen they can be tough on your body and can lead to injuries so start out slow.
A workout that has worked for me and is what I like to call a “structured fartlek” the beauty of this workout is that it can be done on road, trails or hills, but still gives you the benefits of a track workout by providing you the opportunity to mix up the terrain. I would suggest warming up for 10-15 minutes followed by 2 hard, 2:30 easy, 3 minutes hard, 2:30 easy, 4 minutes hard, 2:30 easy, 4 minutes hard, 2:30 easy, 3 minutes hard, 2:30 easy, 2 minutes hard, 2:30 easy followed by a 10-15 minute cool down. This is a ladder of sorts and to make it easy to follow it can be called a (2, 3, 4, 4, 3, 2) with a 2:30 easy recovery in between.
The idea of the Fartlek is each time you step up the speed you are putting stress on your cardiovascular system, and overtime and running this workout regularly will allow your system to improve its threshold which will increase both endurance and speed.
Please keep in mind that this is a pretty advanced method for training and requires discipline and running experience. In order to make these intervals work effectively you need to be ready to step up the pace for this specified amount of time.
Make sure if you do decide to introduce running fartleks in your training program be careful to avoid doing to much too soon! Listen to your body!
