by Larry Eder
This is Tuesday, February 28, 2023, the last day of February.
This is day two Week Nine of the 2023 Winter Training Block.
Today is a fartlek day. Fartlek is a speed play in Swedish and it comes from the late coach Gosta Holmer, who was an Olympic multi-eventer (decathlon, pentathlon, long jump. Coach Holmer was the national coach of the cross-country team in Sweden in the 1930s when the team was not living up to expectations.
Coach Holder improvised a creative way to use repetition and interval training, not on the track, but on the trails around Sweden, and give some control to the teams. What happened was, as the athletes got into shape, they added challenges to the workouts, and got stronger and faster.
Your workout for today is warm-up slowly, 60-minute fartlek, suggested breakout, 10 minutes modest pace, 20 x one minute hard, one minute easy, 10 minutes modest pace, cooldown slowly.
