The Mona fartlek is a 20-minute continuous session devised by Australian distance runner Steve Moneghetti (hence "Mona") with his coach Chris Wardlaw back in the early 1980s. It's become a staple because it packs a lot of varied stimulus into a fixed, repeatable block — handy for tracking fitness over a season.
The structure is 20 minutes of unbroken running, broken into efforts each followed by a "float" recovery of equal duration:
- 2 × 90 seconds (90s float between)
- 4 × 60 seconds (60s float)
- 4 × 30 seconds (30s float)
- 4 × 15 seconds (15s float)
That's 10 minutes of effort and 10 minutes of float, totalling 20 minutes.
The defining principle is that the floats are not jogged or walked — they're run at a strong, controlled, sustained pace (think steady/threshold-ish), so the whole 20 minutes is quality running. The "on" efforts ramp from around 5k–10k effort down to faster, sharper turnover on the 15s reps. Moneghetti famously used distance covered as the benchmark, typically clocking 6–6.5km ac
