Fartleking and My Trusty Kitchen Utensil

I’m getting very excited! The plans for the run are progressing well. We have not confirmed a date yet, but we are ever-so-close. Some paperwork needs to be completed in order to use the schools’ grounds and we need to find out the school sporting schedule. The High School Track area will be the base location since this will be where the two mile loop will start and finish. Parking would be available at the High School, Elementary School and Intermediate School; all walking distance to the main event. I just received an email from the Cromwell Police Captain endorsing the route as being safe and wishing me luck. The Children’s Home is working diligently with many behind the scene activities, getting ramped up to release the public relations’ and registration materials.

Unlike intervals, fartleks are unstructured aerobic and anaerobic training lasting at least 45 minutes. You can even walk between the intense segments. Fartleks are great for adding interest to otherwise boring runs or other sporting activities, such as biking. So go out and have some fun fartleking.

My lower calves and achilles are sore this week, likely due to the increased intensity of the runs. Yeah I know I pressed too hard today. I am all too familiar with this aching when mileage and or intensity increases.  Although hard for me to do, because I’m so gung ho, I’ll need to pull back on the intensity as well as lower the mileage this week. I prefer not to do both, but I need to listen to my body. Calve raises, icing, and massaging them with my trusty rolling pin will become part of my daily routine. It’s amazing how good they feel after rolling them like dough. Of course the pin is banned from its original use in the kitchen. Jenn said that it could never cleaned well enough.

I completed a fast 3 mile tempo today at a 95% effort with a two mile warm-up and cool down. This was too fast, but I could not resist. I felt strong and I have a rest day tomorrow. I believe I’m benefiting from the hill workouts. If you want to run faster, alternate doing one day of hills one week with intervals or fartleks on the other week. Fartlek is a Swedish word for speed play. My son would probably giggle at this word; you can figure out why.