16 weeks to go 9:40

High School Running High School Training

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8 years ago 11/21/2015 9:38pm EST

So here's the situation--I'm a junior in highschool training for the 3200 and 1600 in track (mostly the 3200). My coach just gave me the incentive that if I were to qualify for Arcadia in the 3200 (which requires at least a 9:43 to even be considered) he would be willing to take me there. He is also willing to get me into some early season invites to get a fast time, since the qualifying time is needed by March 29 at the latest. I don't know where his motivation for this came from, I think he is just trying to inspire me to be the best I can. Anyways that is the task- run a 9:40 3200 by late March.

Some of my pr's/ where I think I need to be to go 9:40 early season:

400: 61/57

800: 2:13/2:06

1600: 4:45/4:30

3200: 10:19/9:40 (obviously)

5k: 16:59/idk

All of these (except 5k) were from track last year. Leading up to the season I was doing 30 miles a week max along with swim team every week day. Most weeks I did a short 2 mile tempo and sometimes hills later in the week. I usually had a 90 minute run on Saturday. Once the season started, our terrible coach (she's gone now replaced by the xc coach) had us running like 15 miles a week. My plan for the next 16 weeks is roughly to build up to 60-70 miles a week in doubles (swimming every day doesn't give me much time).easy days I take easy, 8:00 pace at the fastest. I'm not sure what kind of threshold work I should do, or if I should do strengthening hills type work to improve my terrible 400/800 speed. I was thinking about alternating between 20-40 minute tempos and 40 minute fartleks as well as throwing in some hill work. Any advice for how to schedule that, as well as what kind of hills or other threshold work i should do? Also any workouts that you think would be good indicators for 9:40 fitness? I don't want to do any track work for the most part of winter and I've heard too much anaerobic work in base can lead to plateaus.

8 years ago 11/21/2015 9:54pm EST

re: Arcadia

Oh yeah ill post weekly training logs to document my journey starting with week 1 totals tomorrow

8 years ago 11/21/2015 10:29pm EST

re: Arcadia

8:00 pace or slower is too slow. You need to run faster if you are not doing structured workouts several times a week (and you shouldn't be). Quit swimming. All you need to do for your speed is strides 2-3x per week.I wrote the following in a thread a few years back about the winter training my teammates and I did in HS. I went from 4:38 / 16:29 to 4:28 / 9:45, but might've been able to pop a sub-9:40 in the right race. I had two teammates who went 9:15 and 9:11 that spring off similar winter training. Here is what we did:

I trained with some guys on my team every day after school the winter before our senior year, which included two very good runners who ended up running 9:11 and 9:15. I'm not 100% positive what those two did on the weekend, but during the week it was 7.5-11 miles every day, starting easy and often progressing to a moderate pace and sometimes getting fairly fast (sub-6). Once in a while we'd really blow it out and fly through the last few miles of the run at well under 6min pace (with the top 2 guys dropping the rest of us eventually), but only once every week or two. Usually we'd back off to easy pace near the end of the runs again. Like I said, I'm not sure what they did on the weekends, but I was doing 12-15 mile long runs easy on Saturday and a short recovery run on Sunday, plus a few easy doubles in the morning during the week (I ended up a 4:28/9:45 guy). I think the 9:11 guy doubled once in a while, and I know the 9:15 guy did not and took Sundays off.
We had no indoor track season, so it was 16 weeks of mostly easy to moderate running and decent mileage with some hard running here and there. Once in a while we'd do a more structured fartlek, but only rarely. Once outdoor track started we did a lot of long intervals and hills at 5k pace or so early on, then transitioned to more short-interval work (mostly at mile pace) later in the season. If you want I can actually dig out my old running log and tell you some of the specific workouts we did. Just let me know.
Looking back it might've been productive for all of us to do strides a few times a week (I think I did them once in a while, but not consistently), but other than that, there isn't a whole lot I'd change about that winter. We all did core strength workouts and some lifting/strength stuff.

Doubles helped me a lot (both in high school and beyond). My friend who ran 9:11 doubled once in a while, but my friend who ran 9:15 pretty much never doubled (except during XC preseason when the whole team doubles) and only ran 6 days a week. Anyways I think that the keys for winter training (for any 2-miler, not just 9:10 hopefuls) is consistent mileage with a judicious amount of high-end aerobic running. For some that might mean 50 miles a week with a tempo run every monday, while for others that might be 70-80 miles a week with unplanned progression-type runs with a some playfully competitive friends. But if you're you're a senior, I think you're short-changing yourself on anything less than about 60 miles a week.

we never had any "set" tempo runswe always started easy, and once in a while we'd end up going pretty fast for several miles in the middle. Think of them as unplanned tempo or progression runs. As for the pace, on the runs that I labeled as "fast" or "quick," we'd end up averaging 6:15 or 6:30 pace for 7-10 miles overall, but remember this is with a few miles easy (7:00-7:30 or so) at the beginning and end. I never really measured out the miles in the middle, but I'm sure we worked our way down to sub-6:00. When I'd get dropped by my low-9 buddies, I'm sure they were cooking 5:30s or maybe even faster. Later in college, when I myself was in ~9:20 shape, I could hit 5:30 or 5:35s for 6-8mi in a "planned" tempo run.
The tempo-ish stuff, however, only happened once or twice a week. The real bread and butter was 6:40-7:20 pace, 8-10 miles every day. Later in my running career I did more planned tempo runs and progression runs, and don't get me wrong, they are great. But I think when you're younger, you can burn yourself out on too much STRUCTURE. If you are training alone, it's probably a good idea to have a set "tempo run" once a week where you run 30-45min at a "fast but not hard" pace. Don't worry about the numbers so much, that'll come along naturally. But anyways it was a hell of a lot more fun to get together with my friends and go running every day, and get friendly-competitive once in a while. Especially in the winter, where you never know if you're going to have a great day where it's warm and sunny or a slushy, cold, windy day where you can't do any more than slog along at 8:00 pace. That's the downside of saying "I'm doing a tempo run every Monday." It was very good from a mental standpoint to get used to that "playful" kind of fast running, because that is the kind of attitude that really allows you to make big jumps in fitness: pushing your boundaries a little bit every so often, but never hammering too far or too much (i.e. knowing when to back off).

That last section is more relevant to long term development. If you don't care about that so much, you can do somewhat more planned fast running.

8 years ago 11/21/2015 10:31pm EST

re: Ye olde winter guy

Should be 4:38/10:08/16:29 --> 4:28/9:45

8 years ago 11/21/2015 10:47pm EST

re: Ye olde winter guy

Thanks for the advice. I know lots of people have different opinions on the whole easy pace thing, I've been told that you should run slow on slow days and fast on fast days and kind of always had that approach. ill definitely try to incorporate the unstructured tempo type things though, they sound more fun and healthy than planned tempos

8 years ago 11/21/2015 10:47pm EST

re: Ye olde winter guy

8 years ago 11/21/2015 10:58pm EST

re: Arcadia

Arcadia wrote:
Thanks for the advice. I know lots of people have different opinions on the whole easy pace thing, I've been told that you should run slow on slow days and fast on fast days and kind of always had that approach. ill definitely try to incorporate the unstructured tempo type things though, they sound more fun and healthy than planned tempos

Yes, and the advice is right about that, but 8:00 pace is too slow for a 4:45 miler if you are running that all the time. "Going easy" should be 7:00-7:30 for you I would guess.

8 years ago 11/21/2015 11:01pm EST

re: Arcadia

Hey man, I'd love to monitor your training on this thread, but I think it'd be pretty sweet if you jumped on the "High School Mileage and Racing Thread" Every week and posted on there too. That'll keep me really engaged and easily allow me to talk w/ you about what you're doing right and wrong (in my eyes).

Good luck, looking forward to seeing what you've done this week tomorrow.

8 years ago 11/21/2015 11:07pm EST

re: TannerD22

Ok @tannerdodd22 I'll check it out

8 years ago 11/22/2015 12:35pm EST

re: Arcadia

I'm about to post it now!

8 years ago 11/22/2015 2:23pm EST

re: Arcadia

Week 1

Mon: pm 6 miles

Tue: am 3 miles

Wed: am 3 miles

Pm 5 miles

Thur: am 3 miles

Pm 6 miles

Fri: pm 7 miles

Sat: pm 11 miles

Sun: pm 7 miles

Weekly total: about 50 miles. Everything was super slow cause this is my first week back and it's a long winter. I plan on a similar week this week, hopefully able to be more consistent on doubles. After that I may start doing some LT/AT pace things like Fartleks based on how I'm feeling at that point

8 years ago 11/22/2015 4:55pm EST

re: Arcadia

Arcadia wrote:
Week 1
Mon: pm 6 miles
Tue: am 3 miles
Wed: am 3 miles
Pm 5 miles
Thur: am 3 miles
Pm 6 miles
Fri: pm 7 miles
Sat: pm 11 miles
Sun: pm 7 miles
Weekly total: about 50 miles. Everything was super slow cause this is my first week back and it's a long winter. I plan on a similar week this week, hopefully able to be more consistent on doubles. After that I may start doing some LT/AT pace things like Fartleks based on how I'm feeling at that point

It's a long time until spring. I wouldn't worry about doing any LT/AT pace things for the first six weeks. Just get in some consistent mileage. If you're feeling good one day, just let a faster run happen.

Use Christmas break to do lots of doubles, when you're free to sleep as much as you want.

8 years ago 11/23/2015 7:45am EST

re: miles to go

Sorry to sound ignorant, but aside from avoiding injury, what is the benefit of waiting 6 weeks to start LT/AT stuff? Wouldn't it be better in theory to have more weeks of consistent tempos and/or fartleks?

8 years ago 11/23/2015 8:31am EST

re: Arcadia

You need to do Summer of Malmo training.

http://www.bunnhill.com/BobHodge/rtp3.htm

Like you said you don't really need to wait 6 weeks to start LT/AT but you do need to keep your training in under control. You also have to not lose contact with the faster paces.

While Tanner goes off on his own tangents every so often (all HS kids do) it is a good idea to find his thread and post there.

8 years ago 11/23/2015 9:11am EST

re: (%&*&YGtegh)*UHIUYT%*

That's sort of loosely what I was basing my training plan on, a lydiard/Malmo style base phase. I guess one of my questions still is how to incorporate all the different types of speed during base phase. For example, I've heard people talk about different benefits between a 3-4 mile tempo and a 6-7 mile steady state run, as well as Fartleks and hill work. Which are the most important to incorporate weekly, and which should I throw in more occasionally, knowing that I only want to do LT/AT twice a week once I'm further into base phase

8 years ago 11/23/2015 3:41pm EST

re: Arcadia

i agree that you should not start planning workouts yet. just run fast when you feel good.

personally i think doubling isn't that useful until you're near 70 mpw. a single 8mi run is better than doing 4+5 for example. plus, you want to make a 10 mile run seem very easy, and that wont happen by doing 3 or 6 mile easy runs.

so OP, i think you should just keep raising the mileage slowly, but dont worry about workouts until january. you can do unstructured hard/tempo runs but just do them when you feel good on a run.

8 years ago 11/23/2015 5:44pm EST

re: reed

Yeah, doing mileage in singles is definitely my first choice, but I have time constraints due to being on the swim team. I know everyone will tell me to quit swim, but I'm not going to, and I think doing doubles is a pretty good compromise

8 years ago 11/23/2015 5:44pm EST

re: reed

8 years ago 11/23/2015 7:25pm EST

re: TannerD22

TannerD22 wrote:
I'm about to post it now!

youre really annoying

8 years ago 11/23/2015 7:58pm EST

re: Arcadia

Arcadia wrote:
Yeah, doing mileage in singles is definitely my first choice, but I have time constraints due to being on the swim team. I know everyone will tell me to quit swim, but I'm not going to, and I think doing doubles is a pretty good compromise

3 workouts per day is too much though, so even if you swim in the morning, its probably better to just do one run. 3 workouts/day is not sustainable

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