Minutes Fartlek for 800/1600m Runner in Precompetition Phase?

Aaron?

It is all about leg turnover, your faster training sessions need to really focus on increasing turnover. You seriously need to add a 30s or two in the middle of the session. Otherwise sounds ok, don't do any long reps (1k+) or 3-5 min fartleks in the days leading up to an important race, clogs the muscles with lactic acid and saps your energy. You probably already know that.

That looks good.

I had a 1:55 guy and another guy who ran 8:57 and 4:10.

The 2 miler couldn't out kick my 90 year old mother at the end of his junior year.

We added some 50's and 100's very fast- gradually building up speed throughout- with long recovery.

They both got a lot faster. It is about leg turnover and just raw speed.

The mileage and long run will take care of the endurance to sustain.

I think fartleks usually substitute for tempo-like efforts, so the rest between "sets" seems weird. Intervals serve that purpose. 5-4-3-2-1 can start at 5k pace and seems like a workout oriented at distances longer than the mile, not to mention the 800. You could try 60-45-30-15 with even rest.

I am used to fartleks preparing runners for tempos, but if you want this as pre-intervals training, you could try just lower intensity versions of interval workouts like the ladder with jogging recovery.

Others have mentioned leg turnover and I'll echo that. If your goal is to prepare them for hard interval training, then you need to have them run bouts near the effort they will be starting the intervals at. For instance, if you want to prepare them for mile-paced intervals, having them run a fartlek at 5k effort doesn't really achieve that goal (unless 5k effort is the fastest they've gone so far).

I would also spread the bouts out across the whole 40 minutes (assuming they are not using the first x minutes as a warm-up). So 10 x :30 to :60 bouts could have anywhere from 1 to 5 minutes of easy running between them. I don't like structuring my fartleks to be a perfect 5/4/3/2/1 w/ x min easy. I prefer to have them a bit more random. Giving them extra recovery on some and cutting the recovery on others keeps them on their toes and keeps it more interesting for them. I also like to have a longer easy period later in the run, say 5-10 min depending on the overall length, in order to keep them fresh for the last half.

Coach I suggest you read some books on coaching high school athletes rather than ask for advice on a forum where most of the people have no idea what they are talking about.

Here's one to get you started: "The Youth and Teen Running Encyclopedia: A Complete Guide for Middle and Long Distance Runners Ages 6 to 18"

It's available on Amazon

I'm a collegiate runner & we do 1x4, 2x3, 3x2, 4x1 min starting at 5k pace then the 1min near mile pace. Solid workout

I would do equal time recovery rather than half time