How do you run a tempo run?

How fast should a tempo run be?

The pace you could race for about an hour, and no faster.

Jack Daniels and Pete Pfitzinger give the same rule, and neither gives a number. Daniels puts it at a pace you could race for 50 to 60 minutes, Pfitzinger at a race effort you could hold for 45 to 60. Your most recent race of about that length gives you the pace for a tempo run.

If you haven't raced anything that long, both coaches read the pace off a race you have run. If your 10K takes you nearly an hour, Daniels says your threshold pace may be 10K race pace itself. If you're faster than that, Pfitzinger puts it at about 15K or 10-mile race pace. If you've mostly raced shorter distances, he puts it 10 to 15 seconds per mile slower than your 10K pace.

The effort is comfortably hard, and it shouldn't feel hard: hard is interval pace. You'll be glad when the run ends, and you could have kept going a fair way past it. You feel challenged, at a level you can sustain. It's a race pace, the one you'd hold for an hour, but the run itself isn't a race.

Set that pace as your target pace in Pace Training. RunBeat holds your hour-race pace through the block and tells you when you slip off it:

Pace Training in RunBeat RunBeat tells you to speed up or slow down to stay on pace, measured by GPS.

How should you warm up for a tempo run?

15 minutes of easy running, then four strides. When a plan says "20-minute tempo run", the 20 minutes is the block, and the warm-up and cool-down go around it.

We make the warm-up 15 minutes because the block asks for full effort from its first minute. If you haven't been moving for a quarter of an hour, you'll spend the first mile of the block getting to the pace. Run the strides light, about 30 seconds each, the length Daniels gives in his book. Four is enough to open your stride without taking anything out of the block.

Both coaches warm up with 10 to 20 minutes of easy running, and Daniels adds some light strides.

Finish with 10 minutes easy. Daniels adds four or five strides of 20 to 40 seconds at about mile race pace to his cool-down. They're optional.

The block is 30 minutes, or 20 your first few times. We make it 30 because 20 is long enough to learn the pace, and 30 gives you 10 more minutes at it once you can hold it. Both sit inside the 20 to 40 minutes Pfitzinger prescribes, and Daniels' ideal tempo run is a steady 20. With the warm-up and cool-down around it, a 20-minute block makes a 45-minute run, and a 30-minute block makes 55.

How do you pace the first five minutes?

Start at the slow edge of your range and settle onto the pace over the first five minutes. We hold to that rule because the proper pace feels easy for the first few minutes. Trust that feeling at minute two and you're running a time trial by minute ten.

Give yourself a range of a few seconds either side of the target. At five minutes, read your split. On pace or at the slow edge, hold it. Faster than the target, ease back now rather than at halfway.

Daniels calls holding the proper pace, and resisting the urge to turn a tempo run into a time trial, the biggest challenge of the session. His point is that you prove you're getting better in a race, not in a workout. Pfitzinger starts you at the low end because going out too fast raises your lactate level quickly, and then you're unlikely to hold the pace.

What should your heart rate do during a tempo run?

Climb slowly while your pace stays even. Pfitzinger says heart rate tends to rise several beats per minute across a threshold session at an even pace, and more on a warm day. That's why he has you start toward the low end of your range, knowing it will climb.

That slow climb at a steady pace is cardiac drift, and on a tempo run the pace is the thing you hold.

On a watch, the block sits in Zone 4. Glance at it to confirm you're there, then go back to your splits and let the number creep up.

What do you do when the pace fades?

Slow to the pace you can hold and finish the time. A fade before halfway means you started too fast. Next time, fix the pace, not the distance, because the session is minutes at the effort rather than minutes at a split.

A fade in the last few minutes of the block is a different thing. Hold what you can, and stop at the time.

Before you blame the pace, check the course. Daniels asks for desirable weather, relatively flat terrain, and good footing, because the goal is a steady intensity of effort for a prolonged period. A headwind, a hill, or heat turns an honest pace into a too-hard one. On those days, hold the effort and let the pace read slow.

Daniels' rule covers both cases: the proper pace is more beneficial than a faster or a slower one.

How do you know you ran it right?

You feel good about 10 minutes after, and you're not sore the next day. Daniels says you'll be surprised how good you feel about 10 minutes after a tempo run. Pfitzinger's check is the morning after: if you're sore and stiff the day after a threshold workout, you ran too hard.

The other sign is on your splits. You finished the time, and the pace held even from the fifth minute to the last.

Raise the pace when a race says so. Daniels has you perform the same workout several times at the same speed, until a race performance shows you've reached a higher fitness level. A faster race is the signal, not a faster Tuesday.

Can you do a tempo run on a treadmill?

Yes. Daniels puts the tempo run on a track, or a treadmill now and then, so you can control the pace closely. Pfitzinger allows the track or the roads, at first on an accurately measured course so you can check your pace.

On a treadmill, set the belt to your hour-race pace and hold it for the block. Warm up and cool down on the belt at an easy pace. The displayed pace and the belt's true pace can differ. If the block feels harder or easier than your hour-race effort, check the belt's pace before you change the target.