Funny. I’ve never even considered fartlek training on the bike, but I found this great photo from Century Cycles.com when I was looking up information. We used to do fartlek workouts all the time when I was in college running cross country and track. Fartlek is a Swedish term for speed play, and it simply means you alter your pace between short sprints and even comfortable pace while running. I did my rendition of “Old Fart Fartlek” last night. I ran 1 and a quarter miles at a slow comfortable jog and then on the way back I alternated between light posts sprinting, jogging and walking. It’s “Old Fart Fartlek” because of the walking and jogging. We never walked or jogged in a workout in college. We ran.
Some day I will run again. 
Here’s some fartlek training advice from Cool Runnings:
After warming up, run at an easy training pace, throwing in bursts of speed for various distances throughout the run. Vary the speed and times of the speed sections, from as short as 15 seconds to as long as two or three minutes. Between these bursts, allow yourself enough recovery time to match roughly 2/3 of the effort time. The recovery pace, though, should be faster than the recovery jog you might do during intervals on the track.
Wednesday night run:
Distance: 2.5 miles (1.25 fartlek)
Time: 28:24
Calories Burned: 322
Week 2 Diet (Week 2, Day3)
Filed under: Beat the Eat, running, training
