What is Mona Fartlek?

The Mona Fartlek is a training session Australian long-distance runner Steve Monaghetti used throughout his career.

It’s a session that involves some hard fartlek running – perfect if you are short on time but need a good workout. The whole session can be done in under 20-30 minutes.

The session looks like this:

Warm up (~ 5 mins)
2 x 90 sec,
4 x 60 sec,
4 x 30 sec,
4 x 15 sec
Cool down (~5 mins)

Each interval has an equivalent recovery or slow jog period in between. ie: 90 seconds hard, 90 seconds recovery, 90 seconds hard, 90 seconds recovery, 60 seconds hard, 60 seconds recovery, 60 seconds hard, etc.

The recovery time in between can be as fast or slow as you like but your focus should be on running the interval sessions as quickly as possible while maintaining the pace throughout the interval. By the time you reach the 15 seconds intervals, you should feel pretty spent but should still aim to be running flat out.

Time	Pace
0:00	90 seconds flat out
1:30	90 seconds recovery
3:00	90 seconds flat out
4:30	90 seconds recovery
6:00	60 seconds flat out
7:00	60 seconds recovery
8:00	60 seconds flat out
9:00	60 seconds recovery
10:00	60 seconds flat out
11:00	60 seconds recovery
12:00	60 seconds flat out
13:00	60 seconds recovery
14:00	30 seconds flat out
14:30	30 seconds recovery
15:00	30 seconds flat out
15:30	30 seconds recovery
16:00	30 seconds flat out
16:30	30 seconds recovery
17:00	30 seconds flat out
17:30	30 seconds recovery
18:00	15 seconds flat out
18:15	15 seconds recovery
18:30	15 seconds flat out
18:45	15 seconds recovery
19:00	15 seconds flat out
19:15	15 seconds recovery
19:30	15 seconds flat out
19:45	15 seconds recovery
20:00	You’re done!

If you are new to running you’ll find the session pretty challenging so you may want to do a shortened version until you feel more comfortable.

Troops & I think v v close to 7km but we never actually measured it, it was only training after all!!

— Steve Moneghetti (@steve_mona) May 15, 2017