Fartlek, which means “speed play” in Swedish, was designed by coach Gosta Holmer in the 1930s in a bid to revive Sweden’s cross-country ski teams. Fartlek is a form of conditioning which puts stress mainly on the aerobic energy system due to the continuous nature of the exercise.
At its simplest a run of say three miles is split into ‘intervals’. It involves running at low intensity for a short while which is then followed by a sprint for a short distance. After the sprint, you then revert to a slow jog before repeating the sprint further on. To do this while out on the road, after a steady warm-up, simply pick a landmark – for example a tree, lamp-post, or phone box – and run to it hard, then jog until you’ve recovered. Then pick another landmark, run hard to that, recover and so on. Think broader than just fartlek training though – there are infinite ways you can apply intervals to your training.
If you want to find out more about fartlek running, the names of some notable coaches and physiologists you should google are Astrand, Christensen, Saltin, Hedman, Gerschler and Watson amongst others. A run of 4 miles done fartlek was my workout for 20th June.
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