Tempo runs
Comfortably hard, sustained, and the most commonly misjudged session in distance running.
- Comfortably hard — sustainable, but not somewhere you could hold a conversation.
- Twenty to forty minutes of tempo effort is a common working range for most runners.
- The point is to raise the effort you can sustain, not to feel wrecked afterwards.
- Running it too hard is the usual error, and it turns a tempo into a mediocre race.
What it is for
A tempo run raises the effort you can hold for a long time. The everyday version: it moves the point at which running stops feeling sustainable and starts feeling like a countdown.
That matters for any race longer than about ten minutes, which is nearly all of them. It is the session that most directly changes what a "hard but holdable" pace actually is for you.
How it should feel
Comfortably hard. Two words doing a lot of work, so more precisely:
- You could speak a short phrase, not a sentence, and would not want to.
- Breathing is deep and rhythmic — working, but organised rather than ragged.
- At twenty minutes you are aware it is hard and confident you could continue.
- Ten minutes after finishing you feel like you have trained, not like you have raced.
The clearest tell is at the end. If the last five minutes were survival, it was too hard. A tempo should finish with the sense that you could have gone a little further.
How much is enough
Twenty to forty minutes at tempo effort, once a week during a block that calls for it. Someone building toward a 5K and someone building toward a marathon will sit at different ends of that, and plenty of good plans do neither.
Three sensible shapes, all with ten to fifteen minutes of easy running either side:
| Shape | Session | Suits |
|---|---|---|
| Broken | 3 × 10 min, 2 min easy between | Learning the effort |
| Continuous | 20–30 min unbroken | Most training blocks |
| Extended | 40 min unbroken | Half marathon and up, later in a block |
What runners commonly get wrong
- Running it as a race. The most frequent error. A tempo run done at 10K effort is a hard session that costs three days and develops less than the tempo would have.
- Chasing a pace instead of an effort. Heat, wind, hills and fatigue all move the pace that corresponds to tempo effort. Holding the number through those conditions means running the wrong session.
- Starting too fast. The first three minutes feel deceptively easy because you have not accumulated any fatigue yet. Settle in below where you think you should be.
- Doing them year-round. Tempo work belongs in blocks. Running one every week indefinitely tends to produce a stale, moderately-fit plateau.
Common questions
What pace should a tempo run be?
Judge it by effort rather than a number: sustainable but demanding, roughly the effort you could hold for about an hour if you had to. For many runners that lands somewhere near their 10-mile to half marathon race effort, but that comparison is a guide rather than a formula.
How long should a tempo run be?
Twenty to forty minutes of tempo effort is a common working range, with easy running before and after. Shorter than twenty tends not to accumulate enough time at the effort; much longer usually means the effort has quietly dropped.
Can I break a tempo into blocks?
Yes, and it is a good way in. Three blocks of ten minutes with two minutes easy between them accumulates similar time at effort and is considerably easier to judge than one unbroken thirty.