Tag: race training

Howdy! After yesterday’s post my mom asked me what a tempo run is so I thought I would do a quick post explaining the different kind of training runs for anyone who isn’t a runner or has never trained for a race.

*Now take this with a grain of salt. I do not know everything and only know the way I have trained.

Types of runs:

Tempo runs- this is where you try to run the pace you want to run during the race. I will slowly build the amount of miles i do in my tempo runs but it never gets close to the race mileage. My goal will be to do half the amount of miles that are in the race at tempo before my training is done. So for me that will be 6 miles.

Hills- kind of self explanatory. You need to run some hills. No course will usually be completely flat so train a few hills.

Fartleks, sprints, intervals- while not exactly the same things I count them all in the same category. Intervals are where you walk for a certain amount of time then run for a certain amount of time alternating. Sprints are where you have a set time or distance that you run all out, your hardest, then walk a certain time or distance to recover and repeat. Fartleks are another version of sprints but each round is different, you say something like ok sprint to that mailbox then walk to the 3rd lightpole then sprint to that newspaper stand then walk to that red car and so on until you done.

The last one that I do is the long slow run- this is where you increase your miles slowly each week and you run at about 1-2 min slower than your desired race pace.

Do you have any other kinds of runs you do?