The tempo run continues to help build as you get fitter and fitter. If you consider that your 5k current race time was 19 minutes when you began training, and now you are say, thirty seconds better, then your tempo running is getting tougher and tougher.
The hard parts in middle distance running are the third quarter and last quarter of races. How do you stay on pace? How do you build yourself to be in the thick of it with an 800 meters to go? Tempo runs are one of the weapons in your training arsenal.
FootLocker 2011, photo by PhotoRun.net
Tuesday: 1-mile warm up, 20-minute tempo run, 1-mile cool down.
To determine your tempo run pace, add a half-minute to your present mile pace for a 5K. For example: if you currently run 19 minutes for a 5K, that’s 6:10 pace. Add 30 seconds and your tempo run pace is 6:40-per-mile.
Larry Eder has had a 52-year involvement in the sport of athletics. Larry has experienced the sport as an athlete, coach, magazine publisher, and now, journalist and blogger. His first article, on Don Bowden, America's first sub-4 minute miler, was published in RW in 1983. Larry has published several magazines on athletics, from American Athletics to the U.S. version of Spikes magazine. He currently manages the content and marketing development of the RunningNetwork, The Shoe Addicts, and RunBlogRun. Of RunBlogRun, his daily pilgrimage with the sport, Larry says: "I have to admit, I love traveling to far away meets, writing about the sport I love, and the athletes I respect, for my readers at runblogrun.com, the most of anything I have ever done, except, maybe running itself." Also does some updates for BBC Sports at key events, which he truly enjoys. Theme song: Greg Allman, " I'm no Angel."
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by Larry Eder
