Fartlek without Laughing

Riley <a href="http://www.kickrunners.com/forum/showpost.php?p=543397&postcount=7" target="_blank">asked</a> in the Negative Split thread,<br><br>
Fartlek is Swedish for "Speed Play." It's an unstructured speed workout that might look like this:<br><br>
Run easy until you get to the pier. Run the 750m out the pier hard, jog back and around the block. Repeat three times, go home.<br><br>
Or, run to the next telephone pole hard, jog two telephone poles, etc.<br><br>
Those kooky Scandinavian words...<br><br>
I once jumped into a Norwegian sailing team for a weekend. I've sailed all my life and know my job - when I'm the skipper, I'm a tyrant, when I'm crew, I'm effective and stay out of the way. So there I was, assigned to trim the jib, which happens a lot when you're tacking upwind.<br><br>
We made a crash tack right under the nose of another boat and came about, throwing lots of nice dirty air on her, but the skipper kept shrieking, "Foch! Foch! Foch!" I was shocked to the core - this man was a gentleman most of the time, and I assumed that we had been T-boned by the other boat or something terrible like that. But I beat down the panic and kept grinding that jib in until we all settled. And I looked over at Lars with wide eyes, waiting for him to abandon ship or something, but there he was, serenely driving along, dumping crummy air onto our opponents. "What a cool customer," I thought. "We're sinking, and he's still sailing tactically."<br><br>
And then I remembered that "Foch" is Norwegian for "Jib." <img alt="smile.gif" src="http://files.kickrunners.com/smilies/smile.gif">