Spice Up Your Interval Training With This ‘One-Minute Cutdown’ Workout

Fartleks can be a fun, stress-free way to get really fit — and they require nothing more than a stopwatch. Whether you’re an ultra-runner, road racer, or track athlete, fartleks offer an effective training tool that you can do over any terrain.

By design, fartleks aren’t prescribed with specific running paces. They’re meant to be run completely by feel. This lack of a strict designated pace allows you to really pay attention to how you feel, something I find a lot of runners lose when they get caught up in GPS splits and data.

More often than not, when my own athletes stop obsessing over splits and start listening to their body’s cues, they end up running faster than they thought.

One fartlek I really like to scatter throughout any runner’s training cycle is the one-minute cutdown progression. It works well for runners training for any distance from 5K to ultra, and it can be done on the roads or trails. The workout is structured so that each fartlek interval is one minute shorter than the previous, and also performed slightly faster.

One-Minute Cutdown Progression Fartlek

Depending on your ability level, the first fartlek interval should be between 5 and 8 minutes and completed at your 75- to 60-minute race pace. This will equate to roughly a half-marathon pace (for advanced runners), a 15K pace (for intermediate runners), and a 10K pace (for beginner runners). You can also think of this as a rate of perceived effort (RPE) of 5 out of 10 (where 10 is an all-out sprint).

Each subsequent interval should be one minute shorter and run slightly faster until you reach the one-minute interval. Following each interval, the recovery is a slow 90-second jog. In terms of pacing, increase your pace 5 to 10 seconds, or roughly half an RPE, each interval.

A Way to Make It More Interesting

Here’s where I like to make this one a bit more interesting and where the real value lies. After settling into your first interval and finding the proper pace, look at your watch at the end of each interval — but before you look, try and guess what your pace was. Run the remainder completely based on feel, but aim to increase your pace by 5-10 seconds per rep.

After the workout is done, check your watch to see how close you came to your goal pace and decreasing your pace by 5-10 seconds per rep. If you nailed it, congrats! Your pacing and energy management are spot-on. If you faded a bit or struggled to increase the pace on the later reps, odds are you started off a tad too fast.

Repeat this workout every 2 to 5 weeks, but aim to start off a little slower. The more you repeat this, the better you’ll become at pacing, and ultimately managing, your energy in both workouts and racing. Proper pacing is a skill — and like all skills, it must be practiced.

Repeat the above workout every 2 to 5 weeks, but add one minute to the first interval each time. So, for the above example, you’d move to 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 and then 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1.