Jul 93 min read

Are You Doing Your Tempo Run Workouts Wrong?

Updated: Oct 28

Grit your teeth, keep going, 1 more mile- what a stupid way to do a tempo run.

Tempo run workouts

We have all heard of tempo run workouts, whether your guidance was “comfortably hard”, “5k pace plus 30 seconds per mile” or “go out and run fast”, I’m sure we have all had some primary school level explanation of how to do a tempo run. For me when I was young, my coach would just say to us we are running a 5-mile loop, 1 mile easy at the start, 1 mile easy at the end, and 3 miles tempo in the middle, we were watched as we all just raced the middle 3 miles and told well done at the end- a slap on the wrist would have been more appropriate.

Doing tempo run workouts wrong is BY FAR the most underrated way to get yourself injured or end up overtraining/burning out!!!

What is a tempo run?

A tempo run is where you run for a period of time at just below your lactate threshold, or my preferred definition- running at your highest aerobic pace.

A tempo run can be done at the fastest aerobic speed just a tad slower than the slowest anaerobic pace, this is roughly the pace you can hold for 1 hour. Or it can be as slow as the pace you can hold for 2 hours. You can do reps as short as 3 minutes at an aerobic pace or you can do it continuously, you can do between 15 minutes to over an hour of volume. With all these options how do people get it wrong so much?

Benefits of a tempo run workouts

You ask most runners what tempo runs do and they will say that by hovering around your lactate threshold, you improve your body's ability to get rid of lactate acid. Although this is not technically wrong, it is the way of looking at it.

The lactate threshold is the point max point where the body has just enough oxygen to clear out the lactic acid building up. What people ignore is that lactate acid is always being produced but we are just clearing it all the time, by training below our lactate threshold we are still teaching our bodies to get rid of lactate acid!

The main purpose of a tempo run is to increase your aerobic capacity, running at your fastest aerobic speeds (tempo run by my definition) is a great way to do this. Increasing your aerobic capacity means more red blood cells, those red blood cells can carry more oxygen, your body utilises that oxygen better and the muscles require less oxygen as well, also your lung capacity increases- all of this makes running a fair bit easier!!!

Tempo runs are one of the key pieces of training you need to build a strong aerobic base. Learn more here: Aerobic Base Training For Running: The Ultimate Guide.

10% too slow is better than 1% too fast

Since we are always building up lactate acid, even if we are going slower than tempo, we will still be increasing our aerobic capacity and lactate threshold. However, by running above our lactate threshold (like most runners do during their tempos) we do not get these same benefits, but we do get burned out a lot faster than you may think! Tempo is training not testing- most use tempos to see if they are improving rather than use tempos to improve.

How do I implement what I have learned?

The safest way to run a tempo run workout is to make it longer but slower.

Revolutionary coach Arthur Lydiard popularised sub-threshold training as a safer way of doing tempo runs.

Read this blog from 'Champions Everywhere': Arthur Lydiard: The Sub-Threshold Run.

20-60 minutes total volume at a pace you can hold for 2 hours is a lot safer than doing 20-30 minutes at a pace you can hold for 60 minutes. You are less likely to get injured and you actually get more benefits from doing your tempo runs this way. That 20-60 minutes can be done continuously or can be 4x 10 minutes with a 3-minute jog recovery.

You can still do 20-30 minutes volume at a pace you can hold for 60 minutes, but it is important that you do not go too fast because that is where you get injured and burn out.

Worth a read from 'The Distance Lab': The Science Of The Ingebrigtsen Tempo Run.