Have you tried Fartlek before? Well, this is my take on Fartlek. Fartlek, which means ‘speed play’ in Swedish, was originally an unstructured training session mixing periods of faster and slower running. There are now many adaptions to a fartlek session and it can be structured, totally unstructured or a bit of both. It’s a session where the athlete takes control and does efforts based on how they feel during the session. I enjoyed doing fartlek because of that freedom. I believe it makes you mentally stronger because there is no need to stop when you cross a line. You can do an effort where you just keep running until have to stop.
As a coach I often give athletes a partly structured fartlek. I might schedule a 45 minute session with a lower limit of 15 secs for an effort and upper limit of 90 secs. These are just guidelines but in many ways it controls the pace of the session.
If I was doing Fartlek on parkland then I would start my fartlek effort by choosing an object in the distance, maybe a tree, and run an effort to that point. You’re probably not sure exactly how far away it is so sometimes you might go at a pace where you get there in HR zone 4 . Another time you might have set off too fast and have to hang on for the last 50 metres and finish at maximum HR. I would choose random points to run to rather than setting a time of 90 secs as that adds some unpredictability.
Some could be uphill and some can be downhill. Some can be at tempo and some can be a quick sprint. If doing fartlek on the road then you might do an effort to the next junction. Or choose to do an effort to the 6th lamppost. The mind element is important, you can be hard on yourself, so when you are almost at the 6th lamppost you can change your mind and go onto the 7th and then you start swearing at yourself!
The efforts in fartlek sessions are just one half of the equation. The other is the recovery. The length of recovery should vary from effort to effort. You should start some efforts with the HR in zone 4 or 5 and others in zone 3. The recovery should also be a quick jog and there is no stopping whatsoever.
It’s a fun session so just go out there and play with it. I would love to know how thoughts on your experience with Fartlek. Give it a try and let me know how the session goes.