One of the best summer workouts runners can do is a tempo run.
Tempos are the perfect run-by-feel kind of workout regardless of when you run one, which lends itself to summer running where you have to run by feel and effort to survive.
In a traditional sense, a tempo run is 20-40 minutes long at your current marathon to half marathon pace, depending on the runner's speed.
With the runners I am working with, asking them to do 40 minutes at marathon pace in the middle of the summer is cruel and challenging.
*I’m all for challenges, but the goal of the running programs I put out is supposed to be attainable, not grueling.
That being said since a tempo run and a threshold workout are best friends and cousins (meaning the real difference between the two is tempo has no breaks and therefore on the slightly slower side of the threshold repeats, which have short breaks.
I’ve found success breaking tempo runs into segments - so instead of 40 minutes of continuous running, it might be 8x5 minutes or 4x10.
The goal of a threshold or tempo run is to find that comfortably hard pace and sustain it over a period of time. If the workout has short rests, but the pace remains consistent, I’m all about the short breaks!
So when your next tempo pops up on your training calendar, don’t be worried about splitting it up into manageable segments. It’s totally fine to do it! As a reminder, when running threshold workouts, the recovery is typically to jog for 1 minute for every 5 minutes of work at your threshold pace.
Enjoy running by effort instead of assigned pace and adjust accordingly for the heat, humidity, hills, and current fatigue.
Friday’s Action Plan
Accept that summer running paces are going to be slower. If you are running your workouts and long runs by effort level (the effort feels like marathon pace, long run pace, etc) even though the actual splits aren’t what you’d expect them to be, you’ll be totally fine once the Fall comes.
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