Should I worry about my team's aerobic base?

I should add that our goal is to get a 4x800m team to state this year, so we're all shooting for the 800m as our main distance this year.

Yes. You should be concerned. I don't think that training is really helping you with your goal of getting your relay to your state meet. 25 miles per week with a 8-9 mile long run is basically giving you minimal running the other 6 days a week and while lifting and plyometric work have been shown to benefit distance and mid-distance runners, running has also shown to benefit them.

I am confused about whether or not your goal 4x8 is for the indoor or outdoor season. Assuming it is indoors, there is nothing your can really do at this point in terms of improving aerobic conditioning in time for the state qualifying meet because it is probably in a matter of only a week or two.

However, if you are planning for outdoors there is time to remedy this. I would slowly begin to increase the non-workout day volume. If you are operating at only 25 mpw now, you will see great marginal returns as you increase the volume. I believe if you can get your runners up to 35-40 mpw this will help substantially. The 800 is a mostly aerobic event, so aerobic conditioning is vital. Not the biggest fans of the workouts. Would prefer to see some longer interval work or broken tempos. I do however really like the mile-pace speed endurance work even in base phase. The 4x150 workout I wouldn't even characterize as a workout--it is the equivalent of post-run strides.

This is what I would do:

Monday: 2 miles easy warmup, 5x800-1k at 10k pace w/90"-2 min rest. 1 mile easy cooldown. Lift after

Tuesday: 5 miles easy

Wednesday: 5 miles easy, 6-8x short sprints on hills progressing onto track later in season

Thursday: 2 miles easy warmup, 6x400 @ mile pace, 4x150 @ 800m pace. 1 mile cooldown, lift after

Friday: 5 miles easy

Saturday: 8-9 mile progression long-run. First half easy, third quarter moderate and last quarter progressing down to a pretty good clip. (this is great for mid-distance runners); Lift after

Sunday: off

Total mileage=35 miles per week

college4miler wrote:

I am confused about whether or not your goal 4x8 is for the indoor or outdoor season. Assuming it is indoors, there is nothing your can really do at this point in terms of improving aerobic conditioning in time for the state qualifying meet because it is probably in a matter of only a week or two.

It's outdoor. My state doesn't run indoor in HS. Keep in mind, however, that we only have three weeks left before outdoor season starts and our coach takes over our training, so we're not talking about very many workouts between now and then. I will try to follow your general plan of doing one tempo/long interval workout and one pace-specific workout a week, but I feel that the speed workouts are helping and I don't really want to stop doing those. The 4x150m workout was probably a bad example; a better one would be one we did last week which was 300/250/200/150/150 at 400m race pace. I started off doing short 60y sprints and hills last fall and moved into stuff like that later, and my speed has improved a ton.

I'll try to hit 30 miles next week and 35-40 the next two. Once the season starts, I will maintain 30-35mpw with long runs. Last year I got injured in January and probably averaged

4xL8 in the off season wrote:

Since we're basically training like 4/8 runners, what should the last three weeks of our off season be like? More tempos, long intervals, etc.? Speed endurance work?

Long intervals. They don't have to be terribly fast nor do they have to be terribly long. 600-1000m should be plenty long for each interval (or 2-3 min if running on the roads for time). These should not exceed 2 mile race pace. If you do not have a current 2 mile race pace, try 10-15 seconds per lap slower than current 800 pace. You might start with a workout like 5-6 x 600 at 15 sec per lap slower than current 800 pace (if you were a 2:00 800 runner, this would be 75 sec per lap or 1:52.5 for 600, actually, if you were a 2:00 800 runner, you might start with 4 x 800 in 2:30). Recovery can be fairly long....4-5 min.

many athletes with decent speed-side capability mess things up by

trying to train like distance runners. it goes the other way too, distance

runners messing things up by pretending to be something they are not,

hammering out foolishly difficult interval sessions.

aerobic base is outdated as a concept; base training actually includes many things, several of which you are already doing. base itself is outdayed because try to see the big picture

if your 4x800 squad is any good you already have 4 runners w

Sorry, my last post got cut off. I was saying that I was injured all through last January and February and probably averaged under 10mpw those two months. Then, when outdoor rolled around, I got healed up and built up to 30mpw minimum (with long runs) for the rest of the season. I still made some really big improvements in the 800m despite low mileage. This year I'm coming in with low mileage again, but no injury and a much better speed base.