Fartlek

Fartlek is a middle and long-distance runner's training approach developed in the late 1930s by Swedish Olympian Gösta Holmér.

"[3] Hence, in its widely adapted contemporary forms, Fartlek training can simply be described as alternating periods of faster and slower exercise (i.e., running), intermixed.

[3] To some extent, in distinction to the earliest forms of Fartlek, its evolution has taken it further in directions away from the track, toward natural outdoor terrain, including both “level and hilly terrain.”[3]

Where Fartlek differs from interval sessions is in the fact that these short bursts of pace occur within a continuous long run.

[1][15] In the late 1930s, the decade following Finnish runners' supremacy under Paavo Nurmi, Gosta Holmer was the national coach for Sweden (see Gösta Holmér article), and he devised an approach that has been called as "innovative as any idea in athletics' history", introducing "faster-than-race-pace, simultaneous speed/endurance training" which he termed "Fartlek" (with a capital "f"), meaning "speed play".

[1] For his Swedish runners, which were world-class,[1] the original Fartlek workout has been described as "a total of 12 kilometres running[,] with up to 5,000 metres ... being at faster than race pace.

"[14] Described by another, a typical workout might be "seven total miles of running with 4,000 or 5,000 meters worth of lickety-splits [faster-paced intervals], from 40-meter sprints to upwards of 2,400-meter pick-ups".

[1] Holmer used the technique on a 2 mile forest loop where he instructed Gunder Haegg and Arne Anderson to run fast when the instinct moved them and slower to recover.

[3] By the 1960s, in the hands of Doris Brown Heritage, an inductee of the Track and Field Hall of Fame and running coach at Seattle Pacific University, her Fartlek workouts had become assigned to 20-minute sessions beginning and ending with mile runs, between which were sandwiched an unstructured intermix of "40 to 200-yard sprints and five to seven minute segment 'perceived exertions'".

[1] In her university coaching, her cross country and track runners faced these, as well as "lots of short sprints ... [and] five to seven minute runs".

[1] At Portsea on the Australian shore, at a "rough and tumble training resort", Percy Cerutty had, through the 1950s and into the 1960s, applied forms of Fartlek focusing on the freedom of training variations it allowed; his forms were "deeper and steeper", involving "20 percent beach running in heavy sand, 10 percent repetitions [running] up dunes ... and the remainder ... sprints, jogs and middle-distance runs" akin to those introduced by Holmér, which he led "along cliff top paths ... [and] seashore and dirt roads.

[1] In the early 1960s, innovative and highly regarded distance coaches such as New Zealander Arthur Lydiard adapted Holmér's training approach, and like Cerutty, introduced Fartlek-type workouts (alongside his long slow distance methods), again "over both flat and varied trails", using markers to indicate points at which sprint and middle-distance changes in pace were to be made.

[1] As described by Joe Rogers, who coached at Ball State University and West Point, "[t]he Swedes used ... pine needle forest trails ... terrain training, and hilly Fartlek courses ... [but] primarily, it was on level paths", whereas Lydiard used both flat and graded elements in his training: "On the flats, athletes changed paces at markers.

Australian distance runner Steve Moneghetti lends his nickname to a training workout "well known ... in Australia",[10][11] which was "devised by his ... coach Chris Wardlaw ... a dual Olympian".

[12] The workout was designed to fit a 20-minute session,[10][11] accompanied by a requisite warmup and cooldown, e.g., of half the training length (i.e., ca.

The alternating speeds that are the defining point of Fartleks allow runners to work "both the aerobic and anaerobic training systems while simulating the ebb and flow nature of competitive running.

In addition, varying speeds improves cardiovascular endurance slightly more than running at a steady pace for the same time and total distance.

"[23] Runners warm up at a slow and steady pace, run harder than they would on a normal distance jog for an allotted amount of time, and then do a cool down with a very similar speed to the warm-up.