High School Sharpening Workout leading up to State Meet

Our state meet week is as follows:

Mon - aerobic run (35-40 min)

Tues - 8x400 cutdown (2 @ TH, 4@ current RP, 2@ a second or two faster than RP)

Wed. - Easy run 30

Thursday - Easy 30, 4x200 same setup as 400's on tues.

Friday - 20 easy, strides, 10 easy

Sat -state

This is a similar format to a typical week for us all year though. Basically, just scaled back.

Typically, we have a race pace day, a TH day, a race, a long run, and easy day, a premeet day, and a 50 min. day with strides or 200's.

Generally, I think keeping the same format, but less is best. If what got you there has worked, don't make too drastic of a change in the last week.

How do you use Daniels to figure your paces; off of a goal time or an actual PR?

We do everything based off of CURRENT race pace. When we do the last couple reps of these workouts a little faster, that would be about "goal" pace. And, we do all workouts, all year based off of approx. Daniels paces - using whatever our current race paces are.

Starting 2 1/2 weeks out, we did 3 times 2min, 2min, 1 min, 1 min on grass with 3 minutes in between sets. We did it on a flat grass area on Tuesdays so we got 3 of them in before State. It helped a lot as State usually goes out fast and we made it out in a better position.

Keep it similar to last week, instead of 1600's do 1000's. So, 3x1000m + 4x200. Use rest like you'd use on VO2 work.

Tapering and/or sharpening works for some but not others. For me, Freshening my legs by decresing volume slightly and decreasing intensity greatly-up to 50%- produced the best results.

I think if you are a miler type, Vigil's tapering works great. I tried something very similar for two seasons with disasterous results-I ran very flat with dead legs.

I then abandoned that approach with my coach's approval and kept my mileage pretty high (about 80% of aerobic volume)and did a mix of VO2max and fast stuff (4-6 x 200 etc) with plenty of rest between and I ran out of my mind.

I think the key is that successful coaches understand that every runner responds a little differently No one training philosophy fits all runners.

8 days out: District meet

7 days out: Easy distance

6 days out: Day off

5 days out: 5-4-3-2-1 fartlek with 5 minutes hard followed by 5 minutes jogging and so on. Mile warmup and cooldown.

4 days out: 5 miles easy distance. 6 x 100 pickups (not all out)

3 days out: 2 mile warmup. 12 x 200m (cut it to 10 due to steady rain) with first 6 just below 5K pace and then cut down for each of the last ones. Last one hard. Cool down.

2 days out: Easy distance on their own (I go to a JV meet)

Day before: Travel day. 15 minute jog, 2x100 pickups

Has worked well 3 years in a row...75% of kids PR. Seems like a lot of rest but I feel the kids need it at this point in the season.

bump

Looks good to me...

a bit late, but here's ours...

10 days out - District Meet (state qualifier)

9 days - easy 25-30min

8 days - easy 35-40min, 6 - 8 strides

7 days - 1600m time trial, 10min jog, "brisk" 800m

this year our top guy went 4:34/2:08

6 days - easy 35-40min

5 days - 2 sets [4 x 200] start about 32-33 first set, 2nd set goes 32 down to about 29

4 days - easy 30min

3 days - 2 x 800m slightly slower than race pace w/ 400m jog, 3 x 300m just faster than 1500m goal with 200m jog

2 days - 25min easy

1 day - jog course, 4-8 strides

still a couple days until the workout...

How about a gear-changing workout?

Something like 800m w/ 600m @ AT pace w/ 200m @ 5k pace?

tbirdxc. I'm guessing you're Craig Christiens. If so, nice team run at state this year.

12x 30 sec fast, 30 sec easy

In HS we usually did 3 x 800 @ just slower than mile pace (probably about the pace we could hold for the full 2400m continuously) w/ full recovery (4-5 mins) 4 days out from the race, ran an easy 35-40 minutes 3 days out, took a day off 2 days out, and ran 20 minutes easy w/ 4-6 x 100m strides the day before. I always really liked this.

Honestly... at this point it doesn't really matter. Don't beat them up too much and when you are doing speed make sure it is fast and that they have plenty of recovery between.

If your team is fit aerobically like you say and you haven't crushed them anaerobically I am sure they will run great.

Does anyone else just do a lot of tempo stuff at the end, as per DRF?