Fartlek - the runner’s friend

How it started

Fartlek (which literally means playing with speed) was the brainchild of the Swedish coach Gosta Holmer. In the 1940s, he wanted to get away from the track and use forest paths to provide softer underfoot conditions and a freer thinking athlete. There’s a fair bit of forest in Sweden, and so this is a great example of using what you have, something I’ve talked about before.  

Sweden remained neutral throughout World War 2 and, during the early 40s, produced a clutch of top-class middle distance runners, not dissimilar to the UK some 35 years later. Two in particular, Gundar Haegg and Arne Andersson, were the Coe and Ovett of their day and, between them, brought the world mile record down to less than 2 seconds outside the magic 4-minutes. Both used fartlek extensively in training. 

Varied training

Fartlek is an infinitely variable form of training. Indeed, a well-known GB coach has said that fartlek could either be the easiest session of the week or the hardest, depending on what you want from it. Absolutely right, and it doesn’t have to be a forest. There is nothing wrong with using parkland, playing fields, roads or even the track; the possibilities are endless.

What is fartlek?

In its original form, the athlete would head off into pleasant surroundings, not necessarily on a predetermined circuit, and after a few minutes of easy running to warm up, they would put in bursts of varying distances between, say, 100m and 1 km, throwing in some hills if they came across them. Fast bursts could be determined by time or finishing at a particular point on the circuit.

The athletes would run easily between these bursts until they felt ready to run fast again. They might be out for up to an hour, and the varying distances improved their speed and endurance. 

Sessions could be done alone or in groups (which preferably should contain athletes of similar ability), with different people taking the lead and deciding just how long the next burst was going to be, often without telling anyone else.  Excellent race practice.     

To make a tough session like this effective requires experienced athlete(s). Otherwise, it’s all too easy to say, “I’ve just done an hour of hard fartlek” when you’ve really done 55 mins of jogging and a few strides. Then again, this might be a perfectly acceptable, easier session if, for example, you are in care and maintenance mode when races are coming thick and fast. 

Fartlek today

While the original form is still perfectly useable, many people over the last 30 years or so have made fartlek in to a much more regimented session.  Rather than disappear off into natural surroundings, they might use faster grass surfaces and do a fixed number of bursts of a fixed time or distance, which in fact, is closer to repetition running than true fartlek (reps don’t need to be done on a track anyway).  Certain formats may be named after whoever came up with them first.  As an example, one of the most popular sessions in Australia is the so-called “Mona fartlek”, named after the marathon ace Steve Moneghetti.  It starts with 2 x 90 sec, then 4 x 60, 4 x 30 and finally 4 x 15.  The recovery is strictly controlled, being the time of the previous burst (so 90 sec on, 90 sec off and so on).  Evil stuff, but then Moneghetti was one of the best in the world. Not a session for the unwary, unfit or faint-hearted. 

What’s in it for us? 

The infinite variability of fartlek means that with a bit of creative thinking, we can apply it to any group of distance runners, including those at the younger end of the age spectrum. It’s ideal if you don’t like conventional repetition running on a track. I didn’t, and so I occasionally did a fartlek session on the grass at work during lunch break, focusing on short stuff and short recoveries. I was flattened within 20 minutes, which shows that I should have done it more often.       

Examples

Let’s look at a couple of examples. 

300 metre bursts

Some years ago, the endurance competition group consisted entirely of younger athletes no older than 14. During the lighter evenings, we devised a fartlek session, making use of the whole of Tilsley Park. We did bursts of up to about 300m, threw in some hill climbs, and brought in drills, including gems like lunges or high skips, while going up the banking on the back straight. The session lasted about 35 min, the athletes were on the move the whole time, and it had loads of variety (although I drew the line when once asked if we could do tree-hugging). It was fun, and it made a big difference to fitness. 

Whistle fartlek

I mentioned earlier that when doing traditional fartlek in groups, it’s best to have people of similar ability. Nowadays, both our group and the adult–only road runners cover a wide range of ages, abilities and training backgrounds. Can we still do effective fartlek sessions as a group, given this diversity??  We can, using an approach known as “whistle fartlek”. 

In this variant, the coach controls the session and blows a whistle to signify the start and finish of each burst (done on time, not distance). All athletes then run for the same amount of time, but the faster you go, the further you run. Obviously, the athletes need to be able to hear the whistle, which is why it’s been used successfully as a track session by our adults-only group for some time.  It’s quite feasible, though, to use a circuit just outside the track, thus bringing a hill into the equation. We tried this recently, and it made for a tough but satisfying session. 

A few words of warning for the coach, however. I think you need to give the athletes a broad idea of the sorts of bursts you’ll be asking of them. Yes, you need a certain element of surprise, but expecting around 30 seconds and getting 2 minutes is just not helpful.

Secondly, it is really important to keep a close eye on the length of the recoveries and the bursts. With athletes some distance away, it’s all too easy to cut down the recovery time, and the session soon falls to bits, which is of no use to anyone. And, of course, if you are working close to a football pitch, there is the risk of an inadvertent intervention by the referee.     

Don’t get lost! 

So there you have it, a form of training that has stood the test of time even if we don’t all have the forests of Sweden. But if you do have a forest to play with, always make sure you know the way back. Otherwise, your session could be somewhat longer than you planned. 

As always, all views are my own.