Hey everyone, I did my first fartlek yesterday as one of the Nike Guided Runs. The thing is that the coach was saying to do my efforts at 5k pace, and the recovery at recovery pace. I’ve never done a ‘fast’ race-like 5k since I’ve just started running so my ‘5k’ pace felt quite low and the transition to recovery pace wasn’t a big transition at all. For reference, I was running recovery at roughy 6:45 / km and the efforts at 6:15. Should I run my efforts faster and my recovery slower?
If you would like to comfortably run for example 6.15 for say one or two minutes, then you need to train yourself such that 6.15 is not close to your top speed. To do that, you need to repeatedly run significantly faster than that. For example try 8 times 30 or 60 seconds at 6.00 (or faster if you can) with a minute of rest between. Make sure you are warmed up, and perhaps take it a bit easier on the first two reps.