California State 800m Champion Workout

Hey coach congratulations on your kid winning the state meet , big move & stole the race as far as the workout we don't need all that scientific crap, Just run.

Hey Coach. Lactic acid id not produced in the human body. If you are going to teach at least learn the basics.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, it does

.

my.clevelandclinic.org

What Is Lactic Acid?

@ClevelandClinic

Lactic acid is a chemical your body naturally produces when your cells break down carbohydrates for energy. It doesn’t cause muscle pain or burning.

Link:my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/245...

People get caught up in semantics, it’s so tiresome.

Bottom line, you balanced a multi-sport athlete’s HS career exceptionally, evidenced by his results culminating in a state championship in the shortest event on the track to share lanes.

I’m excited to follow his collegiate career at BYU. I’ll be rooting for his success there as well.

Thank you for the kind words.

I’ll be following along with you

Thanks for the content. It's been amazing following you and your athlete's training here over the course of the last 2 seasons. Good luck at nationals and beyond!

We tried out some hill repeats today. I wanted something that would sort of simulate hard 400s on the track, but be a little more stimulating, mentally. We've been on the track for 6 months now.....

Here you go.

You and your athlete have done a great job this season. I like your out-of-the-box thinking as well. With all due respect, I hope he doesn't get an injury from introducing a hard hill workout at this point in the season.

Yeah don’t take this the wrong way but do you have a training plan, or are you just making it up as you go? I ask because I see now real predecessor to 400m hills in anything you’ve shared with us so far and it can be risky to suddenly introduce. And sometimes you’d just randomly start doing double threshold workouts? I don’t know if, for a sprinter/fast 800m type athlete like yours, that’s the best approach. It’s trendy right now but not for everyone. And then you asked that Australian coach for what he’s doing with his guys leading up to big races? It seems like you don’t really have a plan?

Also I know he’s raced a lot recently so maybe that has something to do with it, but do you plan to have him do harder specific speed endurance workouts? The sprinter/fast type 800m runners thrive on that and their aerobic ability can be maintained through non traditional methods in what’s called intermittent training so you can focus your big workouts around extension of the specific race prep. After a certain point with those types they really need that. I’m a bit surprised to see a guy that can run 21.x and 47.x only running 1:51 to be honest. The attitudes of these guys and the specialists and the resistant types varies greatly, and they must be trained differently to reach their potential.

You’ve done a lot of good with your athlete, and you should be proud but I’d suggest reading up on the training differences between the different types of 800m athletes.

Congrats to you and your athlete! Love seeing a bit more into your training philosophy and the outcome that comes with it.

You often see the 800m lagging a bit in HS 4/8 type athletes. Long term Aerobic development takes time with these guys, and you have to make sure to keep speed intact while developing endurance, and endurance intact while developing speed.

It’s very hard to create a well rounded 800m athlete in highschool, so you want to play well to their strengths in the short term and work on developing endurance over time. Most highschoolers won’t run the 800m that their 400m or 4x4 split tells them they should. I know plenty of 50-55 second 400m guys that failed to break 2:00 in highschool.

BYU (another poster mentioned the athlete will be going there) should be fantastic for this athlete. Instead of XC, their pure 800m athletes work on Vo2Max development during the fall race season training block which is exactly what this athlete needs to work on to continue developing in the 800m. Super excited to see how he turns out.

Congratulations. The 800m is a challenging event to coach and as stated every athlete is very different. My athlete heads to Europe on Monday to chase the goal of 1:45 it should be interesting.

Yes. It is detailed, in depth, in the document that I posted when I started this thread

I went back after the state meet and turned the text red on goals that I thought we'd accomplished. (still waiting on the goal of "become one of the best 800m runners in the US"). But, hey, that's what NON and USATF U20 is for.

There have really only been two deviations from the plan

1. We did very little VO2 max type work. Yes, it's beneficial, but last year, the majority of my team ended up flat by May. Instead, we went a lot heavier on what might be called "CV Intervals"

2. The hill repeats were a departure. After the state meet, the workout I had penciled in on that date was 4 x 2 x 200 with 30 seconds between reps and 5 minutes between sets. The goal would have been to split 25-27 on each set. I went with the longer, more grindy type of work after a conversation with his dad that went something like "I can't understand how he can run a 47, but not follow up a 55 with another 55" My answer was that, after his 47, he gets to stop, have some gatorade, and do a cool down. We really haven't asked him to do anything in training this year (other than 3 x 800 @ 2:03), where he has to sustain low pH for an extended period of time. The hills were meant to address that.

Slow Fat Master - I'm not worried about an injury from running hill repeats. I always hear people say that hills pose a bigger injury threat, but I feel absolutely the opposite. There's way more impact force running fast on flat ground than uphill.....I mean, when running uphill, the ground basically comes up to meet you. Plus, we run sprints up our stadium ramp fairly frequently, so he should have been prepared for any extra stress on his achilles that came from running up the hill.

Hey Coahc

I don't know if you saw the thread I started a couple of days ago asking for some update's on Riley's training. I'm curious, because it seems like we've been following a somewhat similar training model (at least in that both of our guys kept the volume of threshold work pretty high relative to what other 800m specialists do)

If you'd be so kind, I'd appreciate a sneak peak inside you're guys' training.

Sorry to have missed that thread as it has been a busy time here. Happy to share some of our training and some of what has worked for my athletes. Here is what a 7 week block of quality sessions looked like before he ran 1:46.08 and won Aussie National 800m

Feb 7th 4x3x200 w/100 jog recovery 3x150 accelerations

Feb 11th 1:47.88 800m

Feb 14th 6x400m on 2min cycle + 4x200 on 2 min cycle

Feb 16th 3x (300m hill 60 seconds rest 200m fast) 6min between sets

Feb 19th 6x200 on 2:30 cycle

Feb 23rd 1:46.37 800m

Feb 28th 8x400m on 2 min cycle + 4x200 on 90 second cycle

March 2nd 2x2.5k threshold + 1k threshold

March 4th 5x1k on 4:30 cycle + 6x200 on 70 second cycle (on grass)

March 7th 10x200m on 2:30 cycle

March 11th 1:46.08

March 14th 3x5x200 on 70 second cycle 2 min rest between sets

March 18th 4x1 on 4:30 cycle + 2x4x200 on 70 second cycle with 3 min between sets ( on grass)

March 21st 6x300m on 4 min cycle last few in 38's in flats

March 23 2x2k of 200 on 300 jog + 5x100 ( on grass)

March 25th 3x600/300 300's accelerating every 100m 5 min between sets

March 27th 8x200 on 2 min cycle

One thing I haven't added is that his Monday sessions are speed 1x60m and 2xflying 30's.

After a week recovery after nationals his weeks have been fairly standard with Monday speed, Tuesday track, Wednesday recovery 5-6k, Thursday threshold efforts up to 6-7k Saturday 1k repeats/progressive run or something similar, Sunday 1 hour.

His first European race in June 13th and here is what this past week looked like:

Monday 6k easy run

Tuesday broken 800m as 25/53/25 with 1 min rest between efforts 6 min rest 400m in 51.3

Wednesday easy 6k

Thursday 6k threshold in 20 minutes + 4x200 on 70 second cycle

Friday rest

Saturday 8x400 on 2 min cycle avg 62 + 4x200m on 90 second cycle avg 27.5

Sunday easy 1 hour

My athlete does a lot of his threshold running with my 31:45 10k female athlete and a good supportive group. Training can be modified as I had a young runner who just turned 14 run 1:58.5/4:04 for 800/1500m.

Working with talented athletes keeping them healthy and consistent seems to be the biggest hurdle that most athletes face.

Looking at what your athlete did yes I would agree he over raced but that is the nature of High School running in the states (I won a few state champs in VA back in the day).

Good luck and hope your athlete has a great career in front of him.

Cool, I forgot about the stadium ramp work