Well, today I start the third week of the program. Really liking the structure so far. Though, I did have a question regarding the tempo section of some workouts. Can you offer a little clarity on what you guys intended by tempo? With the Polar endurance programs, the tempo sections are like a single, really long interval where you gradually build effort until the end.  Just wanted to make sure I was on the same page.

– Brad, North Carolina, USA

Ahhh – the old Rosetta Stone question. I cannot believe that we did not address this before on the website.

The fact of the matter is that the word “tempo” is kind-a-sort-a like the word blue. Everyone has a different idea of what blue is. Blue could mean sky blue, navy blue, or royal blue. Before you can have a rational discussion about what blue means you need to define exactly what you are talking about.

The same thing goes for words like “tempo” or even heart rate training zones. What is tempo for one coach, program, or device might be an easy day or or a steady state day or even a hard day. Similarly, what one coach or training system calls Zone 1 might be Zone 2 or even Zone 3 for another.

The situation does not get any better when you are talking numbers. For example, going at 80% for one coach or training program or watch company might mean 80% of your max heart rate, 80% of your perceived effort, or 80% of your anaerobic threshold. All of these efforts are 80% but they are VERY different.

This whole business of terminology causes great consternation for athletes who try to train together with different coaches or use different training programs. It can be nearly impossible to to translate terminology from one coach or training program to another.

What we are saying so far is that this is an EXCELLENT question but we will not be able to tell you what in the heck Polar is talking about because we do not have their Rosetta Stone. We can, however, tell you exactly what we mean by tempo. In The Riding Bumps Program, when we use the word tempo we are very specifically referring to a hard effort of 91-100% of your ATHR or approximately 81-90% of your MaxHR. (NOTE: this is outlined on page 37 of the book).

As you can see our definition of tempo seems to be different than Polar. This is not to say that Polar is wrong or we are right. All that means is that there are multiple definitions for the word tempo and we will certainly be more specific in future editions of the training program so there is no confusion. Thank you very much for pointing this one out to us.

Roch