Tempo run: 25 minutes continuous

Twenty-five minutes at a strong, even pace that builds aerobic strength and the patience to hold an effort without a break.

How to run it

Warm up 15 minutes easy, run 25 minutes at tempo, then cool down for 10 minutes.

Tempo sits a notch below threshold: RPE 6 to 7, “comfortably hard” but sustainable. You could say a few words at a time, not hold a conversation. In pace terms it is roughly half-marathon to marathon pace. In heart rate terms it is the upper end of Zone 3 into low Zone 4, about 80 to 88 percent of max. Twenty-five minutes is long enough for heart rate to settle, so this is one of the few sessions you can genuinely run by heart rate. The heart rate zones calculator will give you the numbers.

The first 5 minutes should feel almost easy. Tempo effort creeps up on you, and a pace that feels relaxed at minute 3 is honest work at minute 20. Settle into a rhythm, keep the cadence quick and light, and check in every 5 minutes: same effort, same breathing, same pace.

Route choice matters less here than for intervals. A rolling loop is fine as long as you hold effort rather than pace, letting the pace drop on climbs and come back on descents. Avoid anything with traffic lights or turnarounds that force you to stop.

How to scale it

Easier: 15 min easy, 20 min tempo, 10 min cool down or split it with 15 min easy, 2 x 12 min tempo with 3 min jog, 10 min cool down.

Harder: 15 min easy, 30 min tempo, 10 min cool down, or for marathoners 15 min easy, 40 min tempo, 10 min cool down.

Progress by adding 5 minutes every two or three weeks. Once a continuous tempo passes 40 minutes, it starts doing the job of a marathon-pace run instead.

Common mistakes

• Turning it into a time trial. If you cannot say “the pace feels fine” out loud in the last 5 minutes, it was too fast.
• Racing the first mile. Negative or even splits are the target; a fast opening makes the last 10 minutes miserable and less useful.
• Running it the day after intervals. Tempo on tired legs teaches you to run slowly with a high heart rate, which is not the goal.

Type it, run it

Paste 15 min easy, 25 min tempo, 10 min cool down into TextFit and it becomes a structured workout with the warm-up, the tempo block and the cool-down as separate steps. It lands on your Garmin, Wahoo or Apple Watch through intervals.icu, and the watch beeps at every change so you know exactly when the work starts and ends. Free to start, with 10 workouts a month and no account needed. Get TextFit on the App Store.