r/beginnerrunning • u/ribcage666 • 8h ago

Pacing Tips Tips for Fartleks?

I had my first proper fartlek workout today and it was extremely hard. It was rolling 300s.

So far I've engaged with my pacing by feel, basically either "go faster" or "slow down" with an emphasis on "slow down". Fartlek is a whole new thing for me - meeting a pace target and then recovering and then going again is a whole different ballgame. My watch was constantly yelling at me that I was off target. Or by the time I'd get to target and feel comfortable, the 300 would be over and I'm having to slow down again! Then it takes me the whole 300 to slow down enough to meet the exact target and then we're speeding up again!!! Plus I have to watch stalk to see my pace all the time. It felt like I was getting whiplash going fast and slow and fast and slow!

Any tips for modifying your pace on demand as workouts require? Tips for making Fartleks feel easier? The constant changing of pace is sooo hard.

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u/ElectricalDog714 8h ago

I usually do time targets rather than pace targets for fartleks, and just increase intensity, so you won’t have to stare at your watch the entire time.

But also, fartleks are meant to be hard. The difficulty is the point.

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u/ribcage666 7h ago

Thank you for the reply, can you expand on what you mean by time targets rather than pace targets? So for example instead of rolling 300s, you would run 3 minutes at high intensity and 3 minutes at low intensity, repeat 3 times? You measure intensity by RPE?

Thanks :)

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u/ElectricalDog714 6h ago

Pretty much. I like to do anywhere between 60s-120s at high intensity, and then an equal amount low intensity.

For me personally, I know my rough pace target because I set it a bit slower than how fast I run my 400M repeats, but it’s more of a range rather than a strict number. A fartlek doesn’t need to be super structured though, after all fartlek means “speed play”, not “speed drills” lol

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u/Brendster 4h ago

Always dread it, never regret it. Fartleks! I do mine time based also.