My daughter run's the 1600, 800, and 400 in the sprint medley.
The day before a track meet for the last couple of weeks he has her and others race an 800 at full speed! She is racing the day before the meet! She has some shin splints and he is going to break them (he has them do something fast about every day) and they will get slower times in the meets because they are not rested.
This week she races the 1600 on Tues and the 800 and 400 on the medley on Wed and she has a race on Saturday (all three of those) and today, Monday before the 1600 race, he had them race an 800 and then do some distance! She said she didn't go all out this time but still she won't be as rested as she could have been for tomorrow. Not sure how to approach the coach. Also, I think they rarely run anything faster than 800 pace in training even when doing shorter intervals. A little hard to lower the 800 or run a good 400 off of that.