Fartlek Runs - fun to say, more fun to run

Today's training run was a 6 mile fartlek. I remember the first time I read that word. I wondered what in the world I would be doing and if it was legal in all 50 states. Turns out fartleks are legal in all 50 states - and Sweden, where it originated. From Runner's World: "Speed play, or "fartlek" in Swedish (the concept originated in Sweden), is a free-flowing format in which you run faster for however long (or short) you want to." Apparently many great runners have used this method to improve their speed. Some times you can use land marks or street blocks to mark your distance. For instance run 3 blocks fast, 1 block slow. Most of my runs aren't in neighborhoods where that's easy to track so I go with my music and guestimate on time. I find fartleks to be a lot of fun and great if you don't have access to a track for speed work. I personally don't care for tracks; as a stay-at-home-swim-team-mom I spend enough of my life running in circles. Give me some long, wide, open roads, a start and a finish.

Back to my fartlek. Oh, I just love to say that word. Typing it is a different story - it always ends up fartlet. Either way, MS word thinks I've made another in a long series of typos. Today's fartlek was a 6 miler: 2 miles of warm-up running, 3 miles of fartlek at a ratio of 3-to-1, and one mile cool-down. I also added some hills into this workout as the course I ran includes 3 hills, and with it being a straight road out and back that gave me a total of 6 hills. I really like hills, but not that much. 3 of them were in the fartlek which was good as my 1/2 marathon has a killer hill at mile 11 (and it's the whole freaking mile!). I am shooting for a goal time of 1:58:30 which means I need to peg a 9 minute mile average, or if I'm faster, hoo-rah! This means I am pushing my 4-6 mile easy runs to be right around 9 minute mile averages.

Today's 6 miler came in at an average of 9:04. I'm happy with this time because even though I pushed the fartlek, I felt that the overall run felt easy. I think I could push the fartlek harder next time. I worked it 3 minutes faster, 1-2 minutes slower, and I tried to push the hillls faster than the flats. I find that I drag a little more on the uphills than I'd like. Last weekend's long run with a training partner really brought that into focus. My goal for daily workouts is to push hills. Today's fartlek was a good start on pushing the hills.

I did find that on 2 of my fartlek hills I pushed hard the first 1/2 but couldn't finish the hill hard. I finished the middle hill hard but the first and last ones I pushed harder in the beginning of those hills and couldn't push it all the way through. The middle hill I pushed but not as hard and I could keep the pace the whole hill. Interesting to note. I'll see how this hill work combined with a fartlek helps this weekend when I do another long hill run with my training partner.