fartlek v's intervals

shels4ever

I've been doing my 800m reps for about 6 week now, I've missed it this week for the first time. I was thinking about change it around a little and doing some fartlek for a few week.

Would I get the same benifit and what would be an ideal fartlek session.

Stupid_Private

A personal favourite of mine is 1 minute on, 1.30 - 2 minutes jog, repeat 10-12 times. A mile or two warm up and warm down.

Racing Flat

Doing the same session every week isn't my cup of tea - you can get too focused on the times, so on a night when you are a bit slower, you get frustrated. I would alternate between a few similar sessions, 600s, 800s, 1ks, combinations (pyramids) etc, to keep it interesting. If you put these on a cycle, then every 4th week when you are back to your 800s or whatever, you may see an improvement as you haven't done them in a while but you've got fitter from the other sessions.

A nice fartlek we do is 1,2,3,4,4,3,2,1, ie 1 min hard, 2 min hard, 3 min hard etc. taking about 1min recovery after the 1min rep, 90secs after the 2 and 3 min reps and 2 mins after the 4 min reps.

shels4ever

Yep that was the idea to change it a bit, I've done some of my trainign runs the other direction and stuff . But wanted to change my other session too. I think I'll give that 12344321 a go and see how I get on. Looks fun..

Woddle

Back in 2002 I used to do a nice fun session which was you count every time your right foot hits the ground and you could start with 50 fast - 50 slow, 40 fast - 50 slow or even 30 fast - 100 slow, whatever you feel like, the reason I liked it is your not looking at your watch and when your finished and you do look at your watch, you'll be surprised at how fast you went.

stmochtas

The training plan I was using was spread over 3 weeks and included both. This meant that I never really got too bored of either and keeps things varied. Plus you can see what progress is made of 3 weeks which is usually positive.
2 Hard weeks and I easy week. I like the sound of the 12344321 which I might incorporate when I get back on my feet.

pgibbo

Racing Flat wrote: »

A nice fartlek we do is 1,2,3,4,4,3,2,1, ie 1 min hard, 2 min hard, 3 min hard etc. taking about 1min recovery after the 1min rep, 90secs after the 2 and 3 min reps and 2 mins after the 4 min reps.

This may be a stupid question, but what is the difference between the fartlek 1,2,3,4,4,3,2,1 above and an interval set?

shels4ever

pgibbo wrote: »

This may be a stupid question, but what is the difference between the fartlek 1,2,3,4,4,3,2,1 above and an interval set?

maybe i'm way off but my guess is that you dont stop in the fartlek , just changing tempo's?

Racing Flat

pgibbo wrote: »

This may be a stupid question, but what is the difference between the fartlek 1,2,3,4,4,3,2,1 above and an interval set?

There's not too much of a difference really. Above could be equivalent to doing an interval set or pyramid of 300/600/900/1200/1200/900/600/300. But when doing it as a fartlek you are doing it for time - so going hard for that time, whereas doing it as the interval above you would be doing it for distance. When doing it for distance people are very aware of their pace so might end up overdoing it on nights when they are tired (you might kill yourself trying to get 600m done in 2 minutes rather than just running hard for 2 minutes). Doing a fartlek and not worrying about distance, just doing a pace that feels hard might take this pressure off a bit and allow fellows concentrate on form etc.

Another difference might be you keep running continuously in a fartlek - drop back to an easy jog between hard runs, whereas with an interval session some fellows stop for their rest or others run but it's usually a very very easy run.

This is just my interpretation. I think originally fartlek just meant going at whatever pace you wanted for whatever time you liked so it was less regimented (speed play). But when training in a group it might be easier to fix the times. I do know a group who do a fartlek run where they just jog away, then they take turns one by one at going to the front and going as fast as they want. This usually ends up with some fellows always going fast for a very short period of time, and others going really fast for a very long time trying to break the others...so times might put a bit of control on it.