As a newer coach, this is what has worked for my group so far this season (had a guy go from 2:03 to 1:52 & a female athlete go from 2:13 to 2:06 this season so far) - both are fast-twitch oriented athletes.
- Do cross-country. Up your mileage but you have to keep an element(s) of speed within the week at least once. We did a variation of SPEED DEVELOPMENT: 2 x (200m/150m/120/80m) @90-95% OR 2 x (150m/120m/80m/60m) @90-95% OR Flying 80m's at least one day a week. Long runs helped but they only got up to 8-10miles MAX, usually kept it at 60min. We also kept a heavy element of threshold-based workouts, both athletes PR'd tremendously in cross.
- During track, if it was a non-race week, we would have 1 Speed Development Day (above), 1 Threshold Day (rotated through doing fartleks, 1km Repeats, variation of Threshold/VO2Max work and longer hill repeats like 10x200m Hills), & 1 Race Pace Day (e.g. 300m/300m/200m + 300/250/200m, etc. etc.)
- At the end of the day, there's a lot of ways you can attack this "problem" of making an 800m athlete the best that they can be - anyone who says they know the exact right way isn't being truthful.
Great training nuggets from New coach who dis! And congrats on the success with your current athletes. Type 3 runner, I think based on your info and the sample week you gave, some general guidance would be that you might have a little too much volume and not enough pure speed or race pace work during track season, and making that change will benefit your fitness greatly. BUT you have to build it on a strong foundation from the fall, where you don't have to do a full on XC season but should dedicate that period to building your aerobic strength. Seems like you're doing that well.
On the lactate meter thing, I personally wouldn't bother with it and just keep it simple as you said. Even Mike Smith says that threshold is not a pace, it is a feeling. That is to say that since your body fluctuates so much day to day as a result of recovery levels, environment, and weather, the pace to get that "threshold" stimulus is always changing. 6:10 pace and 5:50 pace, for example, could generate the same feeling and adaptation based on conditions. Becoming in tune with your threshold is a great skill to develop.
You are more of a miler. That's mind blowing to me that you can only go 202 when you ran a 423 1600. My prs are 51, 158, 430, and 10:10. All my prs are from junior year in high school. After I got a girlfriend, I got comfortable, and ruined all my training. I lost that "eye of the tiger". Then got 2nd at states in 800 meter "small school classification AA", and that haunted me the rest of my life. I choked, got out kicked by .15 seconds, never lived it down.
I totally left out that component (which is a big one). We do weight training 2x a week + general core strength about 4x a week. The athlete that dropped that time is a sophomore in college.
Most important thing for the pure 800 guy is to really make sure you're hitting all the different paces and types (aerobic, anaerobic and alactic/sprint) on a frequent basis, or within a 2-week cycle. The long-sprinter or mid-distance types can and should favor one type of training over the others, but the pure 800 guy needs to be well-rounded.
Interesting this guy thinks he is a pure 800 runner. He's too slow to be that. I think he's just an undertrained miler.
Right, obviously that. I was actually thinking undertrained 5K/10K guy. But if OP loves the 800, why not? Can always move up after a couple years maybe getting down to 1:52-55 and that wouldn't be so bad :)
- Broken threshold, things like 8x800m @LT2 w/ 1 lap jog recovery, 4x5:00 @LT2 w/ 2:30 jog recovery, 5-4-3-2-1 fartlek, things along those lines.
Question about this: do I need a lactate meter and testing to determine LT zones? As I'm sure you guys can tell from my training sample but I sometimes have trouble keeping a lid on my workouts and I know LT stuff isn't always reliable based on feel. I also try to keep my workouts pretty simple since it's just me by myself on the track for these.
If you have a heart rate monitor, you’ll want your HR to be somewhere between 170-180 by the end of your reps. That seems to correlate well, I only take my lactate during a workout once a month or so to make sure it’s still correlating and it usually does. Even if it’s a tad off it’s not gonna matter a lot. You’re training for 2 laps around a track, not a half marathon.
It’s important to do this work but the only work you need to be really stressing about hitting proper speed and effort will be the Vo2Max workouts and the 800-mile paced workouts, pure 800m guys seem to respond most to these.
Interesting this guy thinks he is a pure 800 runner. He's too slow to be that. I think he's just an undertrained miler.
That is always a possibility but he might also just be a slow runner. Just because you best 400 is say a 60, that doesn’t mean your best event is the marathon. You might just suck at running.
Our OP is running 50mpw, that is a decent aerobic base. I would have expected a better mile if that was his best event.
Interesting this guy thinks he is a pure 800 runner. He's too slow to be that. I think he's just an undertrained miler.
That is always a possibility but he might also just be a slow runner. Just because you best 400 is say a 60, that doesn’t mean your best event is the marathon. You might just suck at running.
Our OP is running 50mpw, that is a decent aerobic base. I would have expected a better mile if that was his best event.
Exactly this:
- Speed CAN be developed, I think the idea that speed can’t be developed on letsrun is due to salty has beens that were mad that their 80 mpw never helped them run faster than a very generous 57 leg. If speed could not be developed, sprinters would all be as lanky as world class marathoners, and would never be doing anything other than form drills and block starts.
- The 800m is tried and true my best event, my all time best 400m is a 49. According to this logic that means I should just run more miles and be a world class 1500/5k guy because I have the speed for it, but not the speed to beat world class 800m guys. I spent half of my year for 7 years straight trying to run as fast of a 5k as I could, 3 years of that under a coach that sends 5k-marathon athletes to NCAAS/Trials/Olympics every cycle and the best I got was a tad bit under 15:00. I’m an 800m runner.
That is always a possibility but he might also just be a slow runner. Just because you best 400 is say a 60, that doesn’t mean your best event is the marathon. You might just suck at running.
Our OP is running 50mpw, that is a decent aerobic base. I would have expected a better mile if that was his best event.
Exactly this:
- Speed CAN be developed, I think the idea that speed can’t be developed on letsrun is due to salty has beens that were mad that their 80 mpw never helped them run faster than a very generous 57 leg. If speed could not be developed, sprinters would all be as lanky as world class marathoners, and would never be doing anything other than form drills and block starts.
- The 800m is tried and true my best event, my all time best 400m is a 49. According to this logic that means I should just run more miles and be a world class 1500/5k guy because I have the speed for it, but not the speed to beat world class 800m guys. I spent half of my year for 7 years straight trying to run as fast of a 5k as I could, 3 years of that under a coach that sends 5k-marathon athletes to NCAAS/Trials/Olympics every cycle and the best I got was a tad bit under 15:00. I’m an 800m runner.
right.
if you are an 800 guy so called pure, the 400 is your next best event, and you want to get your 200m as fast as possible say in high school and the first years of university.
you want to do cross country and threshold over a couple of miles as an integral part of the program.
entirely forget about trying to run a 5k for time, it's going sideways.
even the mile, that's good for training repeats for aerobic as a mainstay, but never mind the time.
on the all time lists only coe was any good at the mile, as all time great.
coe was truely the only guy that could won at 400m through cross country at the national level.