Tempo Runs Explained: Pace, Purpose, and How Long to Hold It

I blew up the first tempo I ever called a tempo. Too fast from the car park, because the pace felt almost easy and I did not trust that. By minute twelve I was racing a session that was supposed to stay controlled. I finished it. I also wrote off Thursday.

A tempo, or a threshold run, is the controlled hard piece. Harder than easy, easier than intervals, and the same effort the whole way through. In Jack Daniels' system that threshold pace is the sustained work, nearer the effort you could hold for something like an hour in a race than the effort of a 5K. The tempo run pace calculator will give you the range from a recent result. Memory of "about how many seconds slower" will not. The VDOT pace calculator shows it next to the other zones, which is the only way the contrast stays honest. (Daniels, 2013)

The point is time at that effort, not a private time trial. Seiler and Tønnessen put most sessions clearly below lactate threshold. Threshold work is part of the smaller share. If it becomes a second long run at an uncomfortable pace, you have not added a quality day. You have deleted an easy one. (Seiler & Tønnessen, 2009, Sportscience)

How I know I am in it

Talk in short phrases. Four or five words, then a breath. Full sentences and you are jogging with a story. One word and you are in interval territory, whether the watch agrees or not.

The first few minutes should feel almost too easy. That is the tell I still ignore when I am vain. If it is hard immediately, you started too fast and the back half will be a different workout. Wind on a flat stretch will make a true threshold feel rude. Believe the effort, not the first split with the gust at your back.

I keep it to one of these a week for most runners. A newer runner might hold 10 or 15 minutes of actual tempo, with an easy warm-up and cool-down that are not secretly more tempo. Someone who already has the habit might do 20 to 25 minutes continuous, or a couple of chunks with a short easy jog between, because continuous was the thing that fell apart last time. Longer than that, up toward 30 or 40 minutes, is for people whose week can still be mostly easy afterwards. I would rather break it than turn Sunday's job into Tuesday's.

Do not confuse it with race pace unless the race itself sits near that hour-long effort, the sort of thing a 15K or a half can approach. A 5K goal pace is not a tempo. A marathon goal pace is usually slower than threshold, and practising it is a different session.

Two of these in a week, plus a long run that was not easy, and the easy days are a fiction. Stack them and you will feel busy. You will not get the week back.

Runapt sets the tempo pace from your VDOT and puts the session where the goal can use it, then moves the target if recent paces or a heavy week say the number is a lie. Build the plan free and take the first minutes slower than the part of you that wants to prove the calculator was shy.

Sources

Daniels, J. (2013). Daniels' Running Formula (3rd ed.). Human Kinetics.

Seiler, S., & Tønnessen, E. (2009). Intervals, thresholds, and long slow distance: the role of intensity and duration in endurance training. Sportscience, 13, 32–53. https://www.sportsci.org/2009/ss.htm