More on tempo runs

A friend sent me a question about tempo runs today. She's a first time half marathoner, and her training program called for her to run two tempo intervals of 1600 m.

I suppose this is ok, but I think its overcomplicating things for a first half. As soon as you start putting intervals into your mix, you are forcing yourself to look at your watch a lot more, adjust your pace a lot more, etc. If you plan to really race the distance, then intervals, speed work, and such make sense, but for the casual racer they aren't going to add anything except complication and likelihood of injury.

I think that training for your 1st half you need 3 paces: Your long (or easy) pace. Your tempo pace. Your planned race pace. Part of the training is getting comfortable at these paces, and learning to keep your pace fairly steady. To get comfortable at these paces its important to do some runs at each pace off the treadmill. The tempo pace is the fastest pace of the three I've listed.

For the tempo runs, start with 20 minutes at your tempo pace or a distance that will take you around 20 minutes. Always warm up at least a mile at the slow end of your easy pace first, and cool down at least a km at the same pace at the end. So, if your schedule calls for 5 miles, and the 20 minute tempo portion will cover 2 miles, run 2 miles easy, 2 miles tempo, 1 mile easy. When you are comfortable doing the 20 minute tempo portion, increase to 25 minutes, then 30, 35, and finally 40 minutes.

OK, what pace should you run? The tempo pace should be a pace you can hold for an hour. Great, how do you know, if you're running 20 minutes?

If you have a Heart Rate Monitor, use the best-runnning Karvonen calculator to figure out your Zone 3 Heart Rate. But you should know your pace. Use the McMillan calculator, or add around 20-25 seconds per mile to your 10 k race pace.

More info on tempo runs is in these links:

Runners World Article

Runner's Resource