Someone once asked me if I could only do one hard workout for the rest of my life what would it be? In the first place that’s an unfair question, kind of like asking if you could only eat one thing what would it be (my wife’s lasagna), but I digress. The fact is that there is a plethora of workouts that we can do on a rotating basis to help us avoid getting stale or bored and keep us fit and in the position of being able to afford to eat more of my wife’s lasagna. But if pressed for the all time single workout that by itself would do more to positively impact your race day performance I would answer with a clean conscience, the tempo run.

Tempo runs are those runs done at a steady pace at or slightly beyond your lactate threshold. Your lactate threshold is the point at which your ability to buffer lactic acid begins to be surpassed by lactic acid production. Studies have shown that running speed at lactate threshold is the best predictor of distance running performance. By running at least once a week at our lactate threshold we can gradually “push the envelope” outward as we physiologically adapt. The big question for many of us then is how to determine what our tempo run pace should be? Fortunately, there are a few ways to access your tempo time.

Comfortably Hard: I know it’s an oxymoron, kind of like “good grief”. How can something be “comfortable” and at the same time “hard”? Yet that is exactly what tempo run pace should feel like. You are running fast enough to feel like you are working hard, but if you had to, you could keep it going for an hour. If running with a training partner, conversation is limited to a few words here and there but no lengthy diatribes can be tolerated. For that reason I suggest a tempo run with your boss.

80% of VO2 max pace: Odds are you don’t know your VO2 max pace and you don’t have a handy treadmill with a team of crack exercise physiologists to figure it out for you. The speed that you can run a 3000-meter race would be a close estimation of 100% of your VO2max pace. Take 80% of that speed (20% slower) and you know how fast to run your tempo run. I work with a young man who has run 3000 meters in 7:52 which is 63 seconds every 400 meters (the dude is fast). 20% of 63 seconds is 12.6 seconds. Adding 12.6 seconds to 63 gives you 75.6 seconds for 400 meters x 4 equals about 5:02 per mile. 5-minute miles are typically what he will maintain for a 5-mile tempo run (I told you he was fast).

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About a year ago I read a research study that tracked changes in body weight of people participating in road races (running) for the first time (since there was an observed surge in the number of people running races throughout the U.S.) The study was considered important by the researchers because if more people running races was in any way related to improving the racers’ health, then efforts to increase road race participation might be a good way to improve public health. In other words, the researchers wanted to know if people were signing up for and running races as a motivator to start exercising more, and whether or not they actually were exercising more as a result of running races.

Did racing improve health?

The researchers actually learned that even over the first couple of years following peoples’ first experiences running races, these people generally experienced no improvements in body weight. Now, I think there were several things in this study that could have been done better, but I still think there was a potentially accurate message of great value.

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