Training Guide

The term "Tempo Run" gets thrown around and abused quite a bit, so I thought I needed to try and find out what it actually was. Then I thought I might as well share what I had found out with everyone so they didn't have to do the same mucking about that I did.

When you muscle cells need more oxygen than they can get a hold of they switch over to generating energy anaerobically (without using oxygen). The problem with that is that the anaerobic method is not as efficient, and it also generates by-products that your body doesn't like (lactic acid) that causes muscle pain. A tempo run basically trains your body to use oxygen more efficiently so that you can run faster/harder without building up lactic acid. In other words, it increases your lactic threshold.

So, how do you actually do it in practice? Well, Jack Daniels is the one who seemed to have popularised the term and technique, and he suggested running for 20 minutes at "threshold pace" (with an easy warm up and cool down added op to that).

Great, now we need to figure out what "threshold pace" is! If we look back at what a tempo run is we can see that it is training your body to raise its lactate threshold. So threshold pace is the pace at which you run which is just at the point where you will start to build up lactic acid (note, you will probably be generating it already, but this is the point at which you generate it faster thjan it can be taken away by the blood). that pace is generally is just a bit slower than 5km pace (10sec/km or so slower) or about 90% of your maximum heart rate. For those who don't have a HRMs then it should be run at a pace that could be maintained for an hour in a race.

Generally tempo runs are the most beneficial to those running distances greater than 5km as they run long enough for lactic acid build up to become an issue. 5km runs are often run high enough above the lactic threshold that raising will not make any great benefits.

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