Or as I call it, the Mono Fartlek, is a structured fartlek from famed Aussie Marathon, Steve Moneghetti. I’ve scanned his old training logs (he was bronze medalist at the 1997 World Championships Marathon), and he did this session just about every Tuesday for the 16-18 week build up.
The structure of the fartlek:
2 x 90 seconds fast / 90 seconds float
4 x 60 seconds fast / 60 seconds float
4 x 30 seconds fast / 30 seconds float
4 x 15 seconds fast / 15 seconds float
You’ll of course want to do 15-20 min easy running before hand to warm up and probably a handful of strides, and you’ll want to finish with an easy 15-20 minutes of running to cool down afterwards.
For my marathoners I typically assign this workout as the following:
2-4 x 3 min fast / 3 min float
2-4 x 90 sec fast / 90 sec float
4 x 60 sec fast / 60 sec float
4 x 30 sec fast / 30 sec float
4 x 15 sec fast / 15 sec float
For my marathoners, this is typically an easier session following a really long or hard marathon specific session, or following a longer race (15km — half marathon). I think for them, it’s a great transitional session that includes a bit of tempo work and works all of the way down to where they are finishing with some good strides to finish.
Tomorrow I am going to attempt the Mona Fartlek…a few posts back I blogged about floating through and not having a purpose. I want to commit to a year of training the Monaghetti way…and that starts tomorrow with the Mona Fartlek.
Phillips Running 