by Larry Eder
This is Week Ten, Day two of the 2022 RunBlogRun Fall cross country Training & Racing Program. Today’s workout is a hard day, featuring a Tempo Run.
This is Tuesday, November 1, 2022, and it is Tempo Day.
Tempo Runs help build strength and the peculiar skills needed to race middle distances in a successful manner. We focus on a twenty-minute run on a track or flat surface. For sanity’s sake, we keep the pace 20 seconds slower than the current average mile pace in a 5k race. So, if you are racing five-minute miles (15:40) for 5k, your Tempo pace is 5:20. It will seem light at first; then, you will feel taxed by the end.
Your workout today is warm-up today, a 20-minute tempo run, then a 35-minute moderate run, finishing up with a six times 150-meter stride outs, then a slow cooldown.
This workout is a game changer. I truly encourage runners who race 1 mile and up to include tempo runs in their training run.
