FARTLEK! Sorry, was that me?

If you aren't a runner, you're probably sitting there with the same perplexed expression that I had when I first heard of the term, fartlek. Is this some new fangled insult that I yet again don't know about? In fact, just the other day my un-hipness took center stage when I apparently was unaware of what a "cougar" was. To me, a cougar is a mountain lion that roams around a lot of hiking areas in California. Well evidently, unlike "cougar", "fartlek" is not another urban slang term that passed me by. It is a running term that describes a training run focused on speed; specifically meaning "speed play" in Swedish.

There are no constraints to a fartlek workout. The beauty of the concept is the free-flowing nature of the sprints. I can dictate the duration and frequency of the sprints within my run. Translation: Surfrunner can cheat and "pull a hamstring" whenever she's lazy. Naturally, I shouldn't be cheating, because the eventual benefit from a fartlek workout will be an increased pace. So I've designed some loose constructs around my fartleks to prevent the oh-so-tempting cheating. There are now several fast-tempo/high energy songs scattered throughout my running playlist. Each time one of those plays, I am to run as fast as I can until the song ends. If they start randomly playing back-to-back then I just need to keep going. Yes, I know..I've turned myself into a Pavlov dog.

I'm not sure if all these fartleks will actually help me reach my speed goal, but I have definitely noticed that I can sustain longer sprints than I used to. Besides, there's more invested in my running pace than finishing my speed goal. Apparently, this race has a time limit and they are intending on opening up the roads after 3 hours. Believe me, I've been having some very entertaining nightmares of me desperately trying to outrun speeding vehicles that promise imminent death.

It's 10 days and counting to the race... Am I starting to feel the pressure? Oh Fartlek!!, You bet I do!