At the risk of dropping myself right in it I caught on to the the words of well now of "intensity" addressing the 'How do you get the athlete to the point of .. ".
Gapa, I would not have a young athlete doing workout like 12X800m. What I would do is build quietly towards that point. The most my kids do would be 6. (If I scheduled that workout)
Sorry I am jumping around here as thought s come into my head.
Okay, regarding the Intensity. I found (from personal esperience) that as I maintained my consistency over a long period of time the "Intensity" level (if you want to call it that) of runs increased accordingly.
I mentioned waaay back in the thread about one particular long run I did. I ran the 22 miles at 2:40 Marathon pace.
I was the least talented and had the worst PR's of any athlete in that group (In fact I was the only one who had not represented NZ).
What I found though, is I ran that "easily" and my recovery was fine. The next day I trained as though I had only had a jog the day before.
This was not one of those "out of the bag" runs it was common place.
My point here is the training (In this case the long runs)are as Intense as the condition of the athletes allows.
Peter Snell describes his 100mpw as he conditioned himself for Tokyo.
To quote " I don't think I ever ran faster than 6 minute miles,although my speed increased naturally as I got fitter and stronger. At first I took 1:45 for 15 miles. After 6 weeks I ran 15 in 1:30 and 18 in 1:52. I cut my Waiatarua from 2:25 to 2:15, with the odd one in 2:12. I rarely ran 2 hard sessions together. i would run 6 minut miles one night and 7 min miles the next to make sure I was in fact, building up and not draining out."
I know most of the areas that Peter did that training and as casual as that training sounds I can tell you that with the terrain involved the 6 minute miles would translate to a hell of a lot quicker if it was on flat areas.
As for those Waiatarua times that 2:12 is still amongst the fastest. The only ones quicker on that course were our top marathon runners of the time.
Unfortunately those times will never be produced on that course again. It would be impossible with the traffic loads on those roads.
Finally, a bit about those 12X800m. I was told by some guys who were there that "Back in the day" Arthur was doing some sessions with the guys of 8 to 10 X 800m.
From what I was told they were knocking them out around the 2:08-10 mark.
One session Peter Snell was struggling with said work and copped a bit of 'niggling' from the younger guys in the group. Nothing was said from Peter's side.
A week later the workout was on the cards again, everyone was duly cranking out the reps.
It came to the last one. Peter stepped up to the line and ran it in 1:42. Waited for the others to arrive and said something along the lines of "Who's struggling now"
That workout had to be done on a road as there was the tracks were too soft (All grass in those days).
The section of road Arthur did this on was slightly down hill as well.
Was that Intense enough !!!!
I have probably 'raved' on here and not sure I have made any sense but what the hell ! Keep this going team !!