First Farlek

No it's not some weird sick fetish. It's a type of run.

I had been having trouble determining whether to run long distance today or do a track workout. I opted instead to do somewhat of an in between and run a fartlek. It's something I've never run before since at track practices all we ever did were track workouts. A fartlek consists of short high speeds intervals within a run.

Since I've never done these, I'm not sure if I even did it properly. I planned on running about 3 miles, so I decided to run fairly slow in between the speed intervals. I'm not really sure if I should run normal pace in between speed sessions or not. Either way, my method worked well. I was able to run easy to warmup and then when I got to the gravel path, I started with my intervals.

On the way out, I did four speed intervals between about 50 and 100 yards each. The last interval was on the pavement and a hard uphill to the grandstands along the river. I basically just picked random points to start and finish the speed portions of the run. You can get more specific and lay things out better than that, but it worked pretty well for me.

On the way back, I was able to get 3 hard intervals in before reaching the pavement again. I might've went a bit too hard on the first few intervals because I was struggling in the back half intervals. I allowed my body to determine the recovery time in between intervals. On the last one, it took me longer to recover. I developed a side stitch too.

Overall, it was an excellent workout and I hope will really help me in the 5-K in two weeks. It was very draining and also rewarding. I'll be off the next two days and Sunday I'll probably ride around during the bike race. Monday it's back to a longer run. I also want to get in some more speedwork next week, possibly on the track. After that, I'll taper during race week.