What do IKEA, ABBA and Fartlek have in common?

When I say Sweden, what first comes to mind? ABBA, IKEA, oat milk, the three-point seatbelt?

How about Fartlek?

I read a great piece by Edward Price in The Guardian, ‘Fartlek: Sweden's gift to running’, while preparing for this blog post.

‘Personally, I have a theory that, regardless of one’s speed or stamina, there are only really two types of people who run: runners and Runners’, writes Edward Price.
‘In order to find out on which side of the line a person falls, all you have to do is drop the word Fartlek into the conversation. If they snigger, smirk or raise an eyebrow even the slightest bit, then you are talking to a runner – someone who runs, but is not defined by it. They hear “Fartlek”, they think “fart”. If, on the other hand, they don’t so much as bat an eyelid, but instead nod seriously and perhaps ask you something about interval sessions, then you have a Runner on your hands. They’ve crossed the line, and running is not only what they do, it is who they are.’

Clearly Beavis and Butt-Head were runners, not Runners.

Fartlek (Swedish for ‘speed play’) was developed by Swedish coach Gösta Holmér in the 1930s in an attempt to overcome their Finnish rivals. It worked. Two Swedish athletes trained by Holmér broke and held the mile world record five times over a three-year period from 1942 to 1945, taking it from 4:06.1 to 4:01.3. It wasn’t until 1954 that Roger Bannister took the record with his 3:59.4 world record time.

So how do regular runners like you and me use Fartlek in our training and race preparations?

In last week’s blog I spoke about how I first incorporated hill training successfully in 2016 training for the Düsseldorf marathon. What I didn’t mention is that we alternated between hill sprints and Fartlek training every Wednesday. These were probably my favourite training sessions. There’s something liberating in how a Fartlek session unfolds. Less watching your watch and more feeling how your body is feeling.

How does it work?

Once you’re nice and warm, about 15 minutes or a mile into your run, you can start your Fartlek work simply by picking up the pace for a short distance, say running to the traffic lights or to the big tree on the far side of the park. Once you reach the target, revert to your regular pace for a couple of minutes before going again. If it is difficult returning to a regular pace after each fast minute, you are running the surge too fast. To improve your endurance, reduce the recovery segments.

As there is no ‘right way’ to complete a Fartlek session, you can literally play around with your speeds. The only thing you need to remember is that unlike intervals, where you complete a short, fast burst of running followed by a rest or slow walk for recovery, Fartlek is continuous running at a mixed pace. Here’s some ideas to try:

1. Shorter, faster efforts over 30, 60 or 90 seconds mixed with longer periods of easy running totalling 30 minutes of work (not including warm up or cool down).

2. Longer efforts over five, 10 or 20 minutes mixed with shorter recoveries totalling a particular distance (say 5km or 10km).

3. Personally, when training for a marathon I like to run 1km fast followed by 1km recovery, for a total of 7km. This Fartlek session would be alternated weekly with a hill sprint session.

Fartlek Training with the SOB Runners in The Phoenix Park, Dublin

Is this for everyone?

Like hill training, Fartlek is not something you need to consider if you’re just getting started running. It’s something you want to build up to. Get your first 5km under your belt before adding speed work.

What are the benefits?

1. Think of this as one of the many tools you’ll have in your armory on race day. By incorporating speed work in your training, you’ll become accustomed to running at different speeds. Something that may come in handy if you need to push harder in a race to reach a particular time goal, or even just to overtake the runner ahead of you.

2. There are two main ‘zones’ for training, aerobic and anaerobic. In simple terms, when you’re training in the aerobic zone you can breathe and speak comfortably as your body is getting enough oxygen to sustain your performance, in the anaerobic zone your body doesn’t get enough oxygen and needs to supplement with glucose for energy. Fartlek gets you into the anaerobic zone and this will improve your VO2 max (your body’s ability to efficiently utilise oxygen to power the muscles and maintain performance) and your lactate threshold (essential to improving your athletic performance).

3. Using Fartlek regularly you’ll notice improvements in both your running speed and endurance.

Anything else?

As this training is more demanding on your body, be sure to give yourself rest and recovery time after. For me, I alternate hill sprints and Fartlek training every second week.

So all that’s left to ask is, are you a runner, or a Runner?