Running is a great form of exercise, but running on a treadmill can become extremely boring. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be! With interval training like fartlek training, you can make your running sessions more interesting. Fartlek training means “speed play” in Sweedish and it can be used at any time in your training, regardless of your goal.
Fartlek workouts are effort-based and you don’t need a track or to know the distance. All you need to do is vary the intervals to something like eight sets of 1-minute hard, then 2-minutes easy. The beauty of this workout is that you can pick any time interval you want for the faster running portion and any time interval for the easy running portion.
This type of training is great when you’re just getting started as it allows you to not push yourself too hard and it’s all about listening to your body to determine what pace to run at.
In regards to getting started, for the first rep, start at an intensity that you know you can complete the workout at and then build into the quicker paces once you’re more warmed up.
