Are my coach's workouts too hard?

If you were exhausted cause your were running faster then race pace it’s your fault not coach’s

That's why I'm asking--I ran what I felt was my race pace, but since I was exhausted I'm wondering if maybe it was too fast, or if the workout was too hard. Does the workout look like something reasonable? That's really what I'm trying to figure out, since I don't have anyone else to ask.

That workout does look a little bit too hard for a high schooler. I doubt I'd be able to finish that workout with those target paces.

In high school, when I was training for the 1500m, my coach would often prescribe 2 x (4 x 400m @ 1500m pace w/60secs static recovery) - and even that was quite a difficult session. I think the addition of the 4 x 200m @ 800m pace (2 sets, no less) would make the session completely unmanageable.

My advice would be:

do the first set a little slower than the prescribed paces (maybe scale it back to 2 mile and mile pace, rather than mile and 800m pace), and then attempt to hit the usual target paces for the second set.

The workout is fine. The OP just needs to develop a feel for what paces he can run to finish it. If he doesn’t run the paces the coach sets for him, the coach isn’t going to shoot him.

Agreed.

OP, you can't run those reps slower? Secondly, why on New Year's Day?

It's probably a reasonable workout for a pure distance guy but challenging for a mid-distance guy. I would have struggled as a college athlete as an 800/1500 guy at those paces.

For a 1:50/3:45 guy, that's:

4 x 400 @ 60 seconds with 90 seconds recovery

4 x 200 @ 27.5 seconds with 90 seconds recovery

"Full Recovery"
4 x 400 @ 60 seconds with 90 seconds recovery
4 x 200 @ 27.5 seconds with 90 seconds recovery

This would be a super challenging workout to complete. You would have to be feeling good that day to hit it. It's not necessarily too hard, but it definitely falls in the very hard camp.

Yeah, that would be a really challenging session at any time of the year. It's pretty early to be doing intervals at that pace with such short recoveries on the 400s. Try backing off the pace on the 400s to what feels more like current 3200 pace, and doing the 200s @ mile effort. Hopefully your coach will be okay with that, as it'll be more manageable at this point in your season (off season), and it'll give you room to improve later when it counts.

And make sure to keep your easy days truly easy. This is Very Important with you doing 3 quality sessions/week.

Is the workout supposed to be at current fitness race pace, or at goal race pace?

If you're thinking, "I feel like I'm in 4:45 shape, even though I've only run 4:59, except for blah, blah, blah ...", then you need to run your actual pace, not one that is based on speculation.

It may sound cliche, but you might want to talk to your coach on this one.

Are other athletes struggling to finish the workout? Is finishing the workout supposed to be hard? Is it preferred that you go too fast and potentially fail or slower but do every rep? Are the paces determined by PRs, recent race time, or the time you could run in a time trial that day? If the workout is too hard for you, what is the recommended regression?

While we can all guess here, it may be helpful to know what your coach is thinking before making adjustments yourself.

I think that workout looks a little hard for a HSer & could see falling off just by misjudging pacing by a small amount. I feel like the 400s (8x400 @ mile) or 200s (8x200 @ 800) would be good on their own. Combining them without a pace adjustment seems pretty aggressive. It's also winter so idk about 2 speed sessions + 1 strength session. Would rather see more strength now & honestly 2 workouts/week is fine. We ask a lot of HS/college athletes to race a ton & peak 3 times/year. Now throw 3 hard workouts/week on top of that & sessions like this that could be broken up into 2 workouts. It's not about not being tough enough. A good coach helps an athlete enjoy the sport, get better at it, and find longevity.

no need to do that much volume, especially if you aren't racing indoors and getting ready for outdoor.

And three workouts a week is stupid, your coach is a dinosaur, not enough time to recover by squeezing three workouts into one week.

Trying successfully requires patience, put together four to six good months and get results, no need to over do it. Find a new coach and get better.

Maybe. He doesn't say what sort of times he ran in that session. If his coach told him to run times that are too hard for him I'm more inclined to blame the coach. He says he's doing those reps at his mile pace and at his 800 pace but is it his current mile and 800 pace or is it the pace he and his coach want him to be able to race at this season?

Which leads to this. He says his school does not compete indoors so this is to get ready for outdoor track. That means we're looking at his first race happening no earlier than two months from now. And they're doing three workouts a week? To me that's excessively hard and fairly pointless at best.

Which leads to this. Most states have regulations about when a team is allowed to have formal practices and I've never heard of it being allowed two months or more before its first competition. If his team is having formal practices this far in advance how is this allowed?

If the OP was my son I'd definitely tell him to discuss this with his coach and find out what the rationale is for what the coach has the team doing this far away from any racing and how the coach wants him to deal with the difficulty he's having with the sessions. If nothing gets resolved with that I'd suggest doing those workouts more slowly, at an effort he can maintain for entire sessions. Everyone has an interval session here and there that goes badly and that you can't finish but that should not be the norm by a long shot.

Three workouts like that per week is a good way to toast yourself into exhaustion.

LOL. Yes, that's the real question. The work out isnt crazy but maybe a little weird for base season. And yes, make sure you run right paces. But if you are in off season, this work-out should be terribly hard and risky? Unless you are doing indoor seriously and didnt miss a beat after XC? Just seems like a race prep/late season workout?

It's January, there's no reason to be doing workouts like that. Threshold is king, that should be your bread and butter workout. Especially during the winter when the focus is building up your base. Short hill sprints and strides is all you need during your base phase to touch on speed.

that's a regular season workout and not an icebreaker. icebreaker factors in you've been two feet up in a recliner and eating turkey. like lets start getting you in shape to then do something like this workout.

i wouldn't beat up on myself for how i do when i first motor up and start practicing. i would primarily take it as "wow, i need to work back into shape." you likely have a month or more to real practices and even more time beyond that to a meet. brush it off.

if you were regular season i would listen to the advice on talking to the coach about pace and/or self-adjusting pace. for distance the whole point is to be able to repeat the splits and finish the workout/race. if you have to dial back to finish the workout, do it. but this was an offseason icebreaker. i wouldn't make any adjustments. you're probably just out of shape. no sense adjusting to being in offseason mode when maybe a week or two of practice or workouts and the adjustment would no longer be needed, or be different.

i agree in some states you could get in trouble for training this early in the year. that usually includes indirectly doing it by providing workout schedules but not technically holding group practice.

You're not wrong on this, my coach is pretty willing to adjust workouts for me based on how I'm feeling. But he usually doesn't like me slowing down in order to finish a workout, instead he prefers that I hit the prescribed pace and then cut out the reps I can't do. The reason I'm concerned is because I feel like I do this on nearly every workout he gives me, so it makes me wonder whether I need to get better mentally or if the workouts are too hard.

I think this was partly the issue, I ran those with the intention of averaging ~1:15, as I want to hit sub 5 this season, but I don't think I'm quite there yet (last track szn PR was 5:07, and I've been training for track about a month now). I actually ended up averaging around 1:11-1:12 for those 400s, so yeah... that was my fault. I think if I ran them slower, maybe closer to 1:17, I would have felt better. Finish the workout better? Probably not, but I would've done more than just the first set for sure.