The Bike Path Fartlek

Anybody who has run for a while probably knows what a fartlek is. If not, see my previous post on the subject. Fartleks are some of my favorite workouts, precisely because they require you to be in tune with your running, and at the same time can improve your fitness tremendously. Without a watch, they require even more awareness of your body.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've started running without a watch most times. This requires me to adjust some of my typical workouts (intervals, fartleks, etc) and pay more attention to what I'm physically feeling, rather than what the numbers on my watch are telling me to do. So far I think I like this method.

One of the new workouts I've come up with for watchless training happened almost entirely by accident one night when I had not started running until late in the afternoon, and so had relegated my workout to the Boulder Creek Path, a place I normally avoid for several reasons. First, it's concrete, and I don't like running on roads period. Second, it's dark, and there are sometimes issues with people not paying attention. And third, it's populated by an extraordinary number of bikers, which might be expected on a bike path. However, this third negative allows for a rather interesting workout.

This particular night I was feeling quite randomly enerjectic. At one point, when a biker on a singlespeed passed me up, I decided to tag along behind him to see how long I could keep up. It turned out that it was quite a bit longer than I expected. I started doing this with every bike that passed me. It led to an interesting workout, and one that I now do on a more regular basis: what I call the "Bike Path Fartlek."

The rules are exactly what I just described: every time a bike passes you on the bike path, keep up with it for as long as you can. Granted this only works in select places (Boulder being one of them). It also leads to an incredibly varied workout. Certain bikers will go very slowly, allowing you to tag onto their wheel for a very long time. Others (especially in Boulder and like-minded areas) will blow by you and let you tag on at a full sprint for maybe 5-10 seconds. The most interesting are those that fall in between, where you might hit anything from an 800 pace to a 10k pace.

Let me tell you, it's a phenomenal workout. Uphill bike paths make it yet more interesting (the Canyon in Boulder is a good route for uphill enthusiasts). I do not recommend trying this downhill (it's rather dangerous, really, and hard on your knees).

At this point, I don't actually have a race planned until April sometime, at which point we will see how my methods are working (Horsetooth Half, anybody?).