PACE GUIDELINES
Some Terms to Know
You will notice on our training calendar that different runs are described using specific terms. Things like “Recovery” runs, “Endurance” runs, and “Threshold” runs. The training calendar is designed to make you better as the season progresses. To achieve maximum improvement, you should strive to complete each run as described. For some workouts you may be given very specific time goals, but for many runs there is some degree of flexibility. To help you accomplish the goals for these different types of runs, you can use the “talk test”. Here is how to do that.
“Recovery” runs – Your breathing should be under control to the point where you can easily carry on a conversation with those around you. Maybe, when going up a hill, this can be a little harder, but this should hold true for the vast majority of the distance.
“Endurance” runs – You are breathing harder, but you can still get an entire sentence out. Something like “this pace feels about right” would be easy to get out, but to carry on a conversation would be difficult, though not impossible.
“Tempo”, “Steady State”. Faster than “Endurance”, these are paces you could sustain for 30-60 minutes after which you would have little left. You will usually get specific guidance on minutes per mile.
“Fartlek” intervals – a pickup in speed over the endurance pace, but during these intervals you could still get a sentence out, though to string a couple of sentences together would need a couple of breaths between each.
“Running” intervals – During the interval, you could get a couple of words out, “too fast” but not an entire sentence.
“Max” effort intervals – best you could do would be a single word, or maybe a grunt