What is Tempo?

Their, They're, There

3 words, sound the same… but all different. Just like tempo, and to be honest a lot of words in the endurance language. Thought I would get into a bit more detail with what tempo is and why we would use it.

Tempo on the Track :

Tempo on the track is the upper end of the T3 zone and almost into T4. There’s a few reasons we use tempo. One is we don’t want to be smashing the legs on the track. We have to train today like we are going to train tomorrow and if you are sore the next day then we invite injury in the door. Another reason is that we don’t want to be opening up the full carb use if possible so running at that pace just under threshold allows us to stay within reasonable fat burning numbers too.

Tempo Tuesday (or any other day)

A prescribed tempo run or any continuous run with tempo pieces in it will be more likely mid T3. This is due to the continuous nature of the session. We are looking basically for a predominantly aerobic run and just using some tempo pieces to get a little more out of the run by using a touch more intensity than T2.