Friday, November 28, 2008

Have You Heard of Fartlek?

Does the word 'Fartlek' sound familiar to you or is it totally foreign? I can't blame you if you answered... 'totally foreign' because it is actually a Swedish word. What does it stands for?

If you've heard about intervals for speed then this concept is just related. When you do speed training and you do it in intervals, you follow a more structured course. This means you run as fast as you can at your planned distance, say 200-400 meters then you follow it up with a fixed recovery time, say 1-2km. You do this for a couple of repeats according to your speed training plan.

As for Fartlek, it is a much more flexible and fun way of doing speed training. There is no fixed interval of speed and recovery runs. Instead the speed runs is determined randomly. For instance, if you're running in an oval track, you will decide to run your fast pace whenever you pass by Mr. Grandpa Walker and return to recovery runs when you pass by him again. If you are running in a subdivision, you will decide to run fast whenever you pass by a red gate then proceed to recovery runs when you pass by a brown gate. You create your own rules to determine when to do your speedwork and when to do recovery runs. This adds excitement and variety to your runs. Try it!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I also have a similar post abt Fartlek. yup, fartlek is fun. Nice post, funny. hehehe