What is Fartlek Training? Best Running Workouts For Speed & Endurance

0:00Welcome to Untap the Extra Mile with me, Spencer Matthews. And me, Oli Patrick. Today we're going to talk about different styles of running sessions. Because there's so many, right? I've been invited to Kenya. Aminal Petros came in here, legendary marathon runner, current European marathon champion. At what time? Well, he has a PB of 204. I believe he ran 209 or something in the World Champs, but it was enough to win it. And he himself, Senor Petros, invited me to train in Kenya. And it's a touch nerve-wracking. I said I'd go, of course. But, you know, they're the best marathoners in the world.

0:39And the session that keeps coming up in Kenya that I've heard now from a number of people, Nick Bester was telling me that he also trains in Kenya, is the fartlek session. Fart-lek. Fart-lek. And you are hearing that correctly. Oh, I know. I know I am. F-A-R-T-L-E-K. K. Yeah. I wasn't tapping there. No, no, no, I wasn't. No, it was just instant. I know how to spell fartlek, thank you. Stephen Scullion, big fan of the fartlek. The fartlek was... Was that in your schedule? Yes, yes, absolutely. But how would he schedule when the definition of fartlek, the Swedish word, no less, is speed play? So everyone who loves the word fartlek goes, it's actually Swedish for speed play.

1:25And then knowledge and discussion tends to cease. So this is what? Speed play? Speed play? Speed play. Speed play. So it's an over-under, basically. Could be. Don't know what that means. Over-under is essentially, I'm going to run 1k at marathon pace and then float a k and then run another k at marathon pace. So I may be, if I'm doing an over-under session and I've got a 20k session, I might do 10 over-unders just to break it up. and I might run a K at 3.45, a K at 4.10, a K at 3.45, a K at 4.10, a K at 3.45, a K at 4.10. So I think that's an interval session. It is, yeah, of course. Over, under.

2:05Over, under, yeah. What you've got there is structured. You're saying, I'm going to do that block at that speed. I'm so glad, by the way, that fartlek is not that, because when I came into this episode, I was thinking, I don't really understand why there's so many different ways of calling a spade a spade. But I thought fartlek was over-unders, but evidently it's not. Well, I think the challenge is, by very definition, it was one of the early iterations of interval training. So it was designed by a Swedish guy who noticed there was a significant gap in performance of Swedish athletes compared to Finnish athletes.

2:34And so he designed this methodology of effectively structuring unstructured intervals, where you would change pace, change terrain, but in a fairly non-structured way. So I managed to take my daughter out for a run the other day, and I did a fartlek session, and what I believe is the true definition of fartlek, which is, okay, let's run as hard as we can to that tree, and then we'll recover for a bit, and oh, there's a hill coming up, we're going to push the hill, and then we go around the corner, and then we're going to run half speed to the bridge. We are playing with our speed. We are fartlekking.

3:09That's interesting. My fartleks have always been planned. So then how would we separate that it's a fartly session from an interval session? My thoughts exactly. That is precisely why this is what we're talking about.

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6:04It's really funny to me that I speak to running coaches, I speak to professional athletes, I speak to Olympic runners. And they all complicate running. But then they also, in the same breath, all say, well, running's not complicated, just go and run. And it's like, well, you say that, but I've actually ran 50 sessions with different names. Yes. But they all feel the same, really. As far as I'm aware, right, there's steady runs. Yeah. So a steady run for me, particularly one based off heart rate, is you set off, you find, you know, your heart rate may vary or, you know, when I first set off my heart rates at 120, even if I'm pushing, you know, and then it will gradually raise.

6:48And, you know, when I was training with Stephen, we may pick a run, a steady run at a 150 heart rate, 155 heart rate, 160 heart rate. So you would then pay attention to the heart rate and you would try and stay steady so that the vast majority of that run were at a singular heart rate. So that's a steady run. Steady. That's a steady pulse run, though. Then there's steady pace run as well, where you set off at 410s and you try and hold 410s. Because on the steady heart run, your speed will slightly decrease. If you run at the same pace, your heart rate generally starts to go out. It's called cardiac drift.

7:25And it's basically like as you deplete your resources and you build in fatigue to keep the 345 pace or four minutes per kilometer, the exertion to do that grows as you become... So your heart rate goes up. So you would naturally start running four fives, four tens. And sort of the fitter you are, you would hope that your heart rate remains steady for longer. So I think a good sign of fitness is if you're pushing, probably not in thresholds, but if you're outside of what's kind of comfortable, call it top of zone three, and your heart rate remains steady for a long period of time, that's a good gauge of fitness.

8:04Your cardiac drift remaining stable is a good sign of fitness. Then there's obviously stable pace, so steady pace. You might just go out and hold four-minute Ks for a while. Regardless of cardiac drift, you try and just stay on pace. intervals, which are over-unders, or just... I guess the difference between an interval sesh and over-unders is that interval is kind of broader. So I may do an interval sesh that is four times three kilometers, you know, with a 60-second float between. And so that's not over-under. Over-under, I think, is 2K on, 2K off. It's even splits. so I think over under when the data comes out you could do an over under with 500 metres 500 metres on, 500 metres off 500 metres on, 500 metres off but tailored then you've got your standard speed sessions so those include rest typically done at a track 800 metres on full standing rest for 45 seconds to 90 seconds depending on the exertion.

9:21You know, go again, go again, go again. Am I missing anything? Pyramid, pyramid sesh. I haven't done any of those, but I know what they are. It's when you gradually get faster, faster, faster, faster until you're up at, you know, faster than marathon pace. And then you come down and you try and come down in the same way that you went up. So if you were running 20K, 25K, you know, the first 12.5K would be getting faster. The second 12.5K would be getting slower. and then there's of course there's a progression run progressive so that you know in the title obviously you just get faster and faster and faster until the end that's what one would call a negative split if you did it perfectly tough you know second K is faster than the first third is faster than the second fourth is faster than the third etc etc that's a perfect negative split I think they are here you're going to end up with you know you're better off with a top end running coach to distinguish why you'd have such variance within hard sessions and easy sessions because we can go back to you know the classic concept of polarized training which is 80 percent of the work is in those lower intensity zones to build anatomical um structural benefits i want more blood plasma i want more little blood vessels capillaries i want a slightly higher stroke volume so my time spent in those low intensity sessions is to create the anatomical structure that allows me when i go to the into the reads of the sessions in zones four and five i've got a bigger engine better distribution of oxygen better utilization so that that's there then i've got that 20 20 my work is going to be in that hard and therefore you've got all these different methodologies which you could probably split into some of they're going to be a sort of a neuromuscular adaptation like strides or if you're doing a speed work session you're reconciling that there is there's coordination in the biomechanics of sprinting which is different to the coordination of trotting right and there's a lot more glute of course involved when i start doing strides or pushing myself out so how do i know to activate my glute and fire it in the right sequence so some of what we're talking about and a better way for sort of you know neuromuscular adaptation would be skill right so there's a skill to be able to move in different movement patterns at different cadences and different stride lengths that i don't want to find out for the first time when i kick in the marathon and i realize my glutes haven't done anything for six months and you know and i either cramp or become inefficient or fatigue at a much faster rate than i would do otherwise then there's all the energy system work that we've spoken about before which is you know when i move into zones four and five i'm utilizing energy production from non-oxygen based sources so glycolytic pathways glycogen in my muscles and liver um are now contributing to previously that that fat storage and come with the cost of more fatigue inducing markers like hydrogen ions and and i haven't got unlimited carbohydrates so i've got to build capability to use different energy systems by exposing myself to them and if you think of the basic if we go back to fartler the very basic premise of an interval is i'm going to go and do something to train my body at it but i can't do it for that long so if we do a standard interval session i'm going to do it for enough time to expose my body to the overwhelm of that session, be it loads of hydrogen ions or loads of biomechanical strain.

12:35But then I'm going to give myself a period between where I recover enough to do it again. So is the point of the perfect fartlek to sort of stop once the speed is becoming problematic and then recuperate just enough to be able to go again? So I love the idea of a real fartlek. I don't think I've ever done a proper fartlek then. And Scully, cover your ears, because he'll obviously think... In the runners' world, they might define a fartlek as... Because there are people who... He's obviously set... He has set me fartlek before where, you know, he said... I think the difference is... I know what the difference is.

13:10He hasn't set paces for the fartlek. Yeah, okay. So he has said something like... He said something like, run for two minutes hard. Yeah. And then run for a minute soft. And then run for two minutes hard. So it's kind of not specifying where my heart rate or pace is. It's just to kind of like, you know, give yourself a good kick up the ass and then take a bit of time back and then, you know, go again and again.

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15:18Did you know there are 3 ,000 different names for colors in the dictionary? Or that leprechauns were once called shoemakers? Those are the kinds of things I love talking about on the Grammar Girl podcast. I'm Mignon Fogarty, and I've been hosting Grammar Girl for 20 years now. Can you believe it? On Tuesdays, I share quick tips to clean up your writing, and stories about language you'll want to text to a friend, like the word recipe first referred to a list of medications you'd get from a doctor. And on Thursdays, I sit down with authors, freelancers, and the people who actually make the dictionaries and style books we all argue about.

15:56Find Grammar Girl on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And give it a follow so you don't miss an episode. ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts. Class is always in session at acast.com.

16:17we've got to remember that there are the elite runners you know training under stevens as you with a very clear target lots of people run because it's their psychological well-being lots of people run because it it's their it's their dissipation of stress hormones it's it's keeping them from an energetic point of view engaged and and there's a freedom to fart that i think isn't quite the same as as a structured interval which is i'm just going to gas it for for 30 seconds now or you know i'm gonna i'm gonna push to the to the lamppost and then recover to the next one i always think it's that interesting connotation if i run a fartlek so i'm running a fartlek because i'm playing with speed my daughter isn't because she's being forced to run against her natural you know her natural rhythms she might want to not sprint to that lamppost or cruise to the lamppost so even in the idea it is play and i think we can over structure things sometimes to say right i've got to be at you know zone three zone four threshold for three and a half minutes and i'm going to be recovering into zone zero and i'm going to clear my lactate down to this level there's something about fartlek which is i think there's lots of different modalities of structured intervals you know of which you know popularized models might be the norwegian four by four or the zappatek methodology or anybody who's wanted to you know has led an elite training academy is the lydia is there a lydia fartlek mona fartlek they've created a model because they trained elite athletes they they if you like patent that model it helps elevate them to superstardom but is it fartlek if you're not playing like if you want to go for and come around to my house for a play and it's loads of rigid rules doesn't sound like fun to me it's interesting when you consider that what you just said that the fartlek is such a key part of this kenyan regime because you can imagine them having much more fun training you know specifically out there at altitude in big groups like i already kind of know you know i love africa and i've spent lots of time in africa i already know like how fun that camp would be genius yeah it'd be amazing yeah um and i have to say you know when you're chasing a fast marathon goal and you enter a block and you know what would be what would be incredible which of course you know i don't have yet is the experience just to know exactly what to do yourself with how you're feeling that's that's the ultimate right like totally being steven scullion or alfie manthorpe yeah and being able to just go to the track and go this is what i need right instead of like assigning me a plan and me going oh you know god i really don't feel like doing that session today but i'm going to do it anyway whereas like sometimes you wake up full of beans and the only session left in the week is like an 8k easy run and you go that's a bit of a shame yeah i love that whereas like you know i forced myself to do a 22k over under the other night when i felt like death you know to achieve what you're going to achieve you need that structure you're stuck because some of that structure will take away some of what could be the the innate joy of running which is we we've always run from an evolutionary point of view we we run to escape we run to to from place to place it's like it is one of the most natural wonderful things we can do and some people feel that and then you suddenly straightjacket it with rules that aren't rules that they're potential principles and structures that have been evidence to work for elite athletes but you know me squeezing a minute off my 5k time versus going out with a you know what i feel amazing i'm just going to gas it you know i'm going to change i'm going to sprint and i'm going to in that process yes i'm going to challenge different energy systems i might get more lactate tolerance i might get a slightly better utilization of fat you know in in my lower intensity records but that's not what i'm thinking about when i'm burning it as hard as i can to you know the fifth tree on the on the horizon because i decided that was what what i felt like doing with the freedom to change gears and we we can change gears there's so many people don't ever run fast you know it's like open up there is something we must never forget about running which is its joyfulness and i love intervals and i think the data will report that maybe the norwegian four by four where we have this sort of four minutes at you know your fastest four minute pace followed by three minutes recovery repeated four times would be the most effective way of boosting vo2 max great but it's a wednesday night i've had an unbelievable day almost everything went everything went great for me today i just want to you know not be beholden to a structure for an event that isn't going to make my bread and butter you know it's not my profession if i'm a professional runner executing a very clear target in olympic games uh you know a 5k competition i have to have discipline that might exclude some of the joyfulness of running and and i think that's always the challenge with anything i rarely see people at the very elite level of their sport who've retained the natural joyfulness of people maybe a rung or two below and you at the moment you've adopted you know if you want to and you're going to do I truly have no doubt you'll do the 245 you should have some doubt it's hard honestly I know I cannot imagine how hard it is you are trying to do something that is at the very limits of your physical it's beyond the limits of your capacity therefore you have to deconstruct and build again so here is that challenge can you have your cake and eat it and can you afford to run a I feel like a fartlek session tonight when that would deplete energy systems that Stephen would have you exhausting the following day.

21:41So if he's saying, I wanted a session where you fundamentally didn't touch your muscle glycogen because I want you entirely in zone two or a heart rate 145, 150 beats per minute, he's relying on you coming into tomorrow's session in a certain physical state that enables you to execute that. And I would acquit that to, if you do a crap recovery, then the next rep is going to be awful. and your recovery or low intensity runs would have been in Stephen's mind compromising the efficacy of the hard sessions and so what you felt like doing is irrelevant it derails the plan So to wrap up this week's episode I mean we've gone far and wide in the realm of running Diversity Yes, but indeed we began with the fartlek We did Indeed, play is fartlek better than other sessions what does it actually do to your body and should runners be running ze fartlek i think i think they should i like it i don't think there's great literature on it because your fartlek is different than my fartlek if we say we're doing the norwegian four by four you can take 100 people measure that some parameter before some parameter afterwards amazing fartlek by definition being speed play how would we ever determine success and so it hasn't got great literature to say that mucking about with pace and terrain and and just doing it by whim and feel creates a better outcome i think most coaches will have it in their portfolio maybe to build um race day capability you know when you run valencia you're gonna have to burst past someone before they turn the corner in front of you you're gonna have to slow down when you get into a you know a whole load of traffic you might go to the toilet and then need to you won't never Never.

23:26No, you won't. No, genuinely, I won't. No, you won't. I'm Paula Ratcliffe, like, all day long. And I wouldn't even, like, pull up to do it. I'd just do it. Well, let's imagine someone who wasn't as ably prepared to soil themselves as you slowed down and went to the toilet.

23:42You're almost leaning into the challenge. I wouldn't care at all. Let me tell you. Let me tell you something. Obviously, if it's a training session, or if it's, like, a fartlek session, you know, in the park, and we're training, or even if it's like a 10k or a park run and I desperately need the bog, then sure, whatever. Pull the plug. Who gives a shit? Valencia Marathon, 2026. The pinnacle of my efforts for six months. You think I'm stopping for a port-a-loo? It's going straight down the leg. Let's imagine someone else has gone to the loo with some sense of slowing down. That's part like the intermittent change of pace.

24:23They've got to run up the hill to get around the person in front of them. So far, is training in the same way as one of the key principles of exercise is specificity. you run fast, run slow, you know, whatever, you're just out of running. I think the reason it works well is because it is quite fun. Like, instead of having these big, hairy, leery, audacious sessions that are in your face that actually feel a bit shit when you get going because it's literally like, the other day, what did we do? We ran a progressive 24K or something and it was 6K at a certain pace, then 6K faster, then 6K faster.

24:56You know, and it's a lot. So that was 18K. So it was three blocks of six. And it was something like 405s, 355s, and 340s. And so when you're in the 355s, having just ran 6K and you're halfway through, so you're 9K into the session, you've got 9K left of work, and you know that it's just only going to get faster and there's no floating. stuff like that can be like oh my god like you know i could just be at home watching the gentleman i know you know i mean theo james is amazing moustache absolutely delicious but like but i i agree and that's partly that you can get fatigued with being too structured and i think partly is it is an antidote i would expect in that session we can justify everything that's happening to you that you've built more lactate tolerance you've built more mitochondria you've built more uh again more tensile strength in tendons and ligaments you would argue all the things that happen in intervals will happen in fartlek but less certain because the distances the durations are less structured less evidentable so i i think your summary of it is is actually the right one it's it's an antidote to overly structured sessions that also reflects game day real life that will be changing pace there will be bursts of speed that will be recovering from that it's got all the biological facets of an interval session it's got all the anatomical benefits of strides and all those things but we can't sit here and go that's a perfect structure because play shouldn't be overly structured play speed play the clue is in the name and that's why you know it's it's a big topic but a small topic we would like to bring this episode to a close fartlek and just about every other running session that we have mentioned for the love of running catch you next week for another episode of untapped with no doubt an extraordinary guest and more Extra Mile.

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27:54One, I'm sorry you had to listen to Mark Zuckerberg on a podcast. Me too. Would you like to read the email or should I? No, no, no. I would love to read the email. My first internet memory. It's like asking what's the first time I ate food. Do you ever go online and just get absolutely run over by the onslaught of drama, disaster, and discourse? I'm Kate Lindsay, host of IcyYMI, a.k.a. In Case You Missed It, an internet culture podcast from Slate. Twice a week, we invite smart thinkers across the internet to discuss the latest trending topics and how being online right now actually makes us feel.

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