A discussion about tempo

Hi all, I wanted to start a discussion around tempo runs, something that has become quite contested. It’s obvious that tempo runs have been core to most programs historically, however new thinking tends to push back on tempo runs as being at best a waste of time, and at worse a driver of overuse injury. I don’t believe this to be the case, and I’ll discuss my own history to try and open up dialogue about others experiences and thoughts here.

For context, my third season I had a very tempo and volume heavy offseason. However, my season opener was the slowest I’d ran in over a year. The following 6 month season, I adopted a very modern, purely speed focussed style of training, and saw rapid improvement, closing the season with a 21.8 despite opening in 23.5.

Seeing these results, my next offseason shifted to the very modern ‘speed above all else’ philosophy. However, I quickly pulled my hamstring despite being very injury resilient my entire career. I came back though, running a personal best 21.4 two months into the season. However, I fizzled out after this, dealing with constant setbacks due to injury and finishing the season with a 22.2

This series of events has led me to believe that whilst tempo does not directly make you faster, and in fact makes you slower, it’s something that’s a necessary evil to ensure longterm health and performance at the right times. This offseason, I’ve adopted more of a 50/50 split, doing tempo once a week and top speed once a week, and I’ll guess I’ll find out its effectiveness once my season begins in December.

So anyway, what are your thoughts on tempo?