saa says:

so why are you doing farlek if you feel you should be building up endurance thats sort of a contradiction...?

adigerati says:

I don't believe that endurance and speed are mutually exclusive.

My scheduled run for today was a 4 mile fartlek. My goal for today was to complete all 4 miles of that fartlek. My stats look more like I was doing a recovery run :( .... so it seems that my perceived effort during a fartlek is askew of my actual effort. More practice needed.

No matter what angle you look at it, my statement is that my goal right now is to do the distance. If that distance involves doing fartleks, intervals, or hills then that is the manner in which I will try to accomplish that distance.

I want to run longer faster, or is it faster longer? Either way I don't see the contradiction :).

jdoty1977 says:

You cannot mess up a fartlek run. It is all about changing it up. If all you do is practice running slow over a long distance that is all you will ever acheive. Your pace will look slower with the ups and downs. Getting those faster muscles to work in sync with the slow twitch muscles is the key. Run fast for a minute, recover, rinse and repeat if necessary. Or try running faster for 5 minutes, recover, speed up for 4 minutes, recover, 3 minutes, 2 then 1. If you dont trust the benefits, check your best times and see if they improve. I like a standard 2 mile timed run over the same route. Test your time every couple of weeks. Your times will improve. With more speed comes less need for endrance anyway.