My quest for sub 1:50 in the 800m

OLD SMTC SOB wrote:

When you raced to 1:52 and change, how did you split your first 400, then your 600? Seems to me from your 800 time you should be down around 3:55 or so for the 1500. Meaning you can't hold your speed over the longer distance of the 1500, which likely means you can't hold your speed over the last 400 or 200 of the 800. Thus my question regarding how you split it.

Funnily enough, it's quite the opposite. I don't have exact splits from my PR down to the 200, but it was relatively even.

In my second to last race (would have been my last race had I not PRd), I decided to run the race my own way, even if it wasn't how I was told to run the race. Usually, I would go out in 26 high or 27 something and try to hang on to the front group and get in good position, then we'd come through in 55/56 and I'd feel like crap and lay an egg in the 3rd 200m.

At my second to last race of the season, when I dropped my PR from 1:55.5 to 1:54.3, I decided to go out comfortably and real the pack in slowly during the 2nd 200m and try to reinvest better during the 3rd 200m. So I went out in about 28 seconds, 10 or so meters back from the rest of the field, and slowly caught up to the pack during the 2nd 200m. I went through 400m in FAT 56.4 I believe, somewhere in that area. I pushed a little better than usual through 600m but it still could have been better. And I finished pretty fast. My 2nd two 200m splits were probably about 29 and 28. I felt like I had a decent bit left in the tank.

So now I had qualified for my last meet, and I was just happy to be there, hoping to maybe shave a tenth or two off my PR. My plan was to relax and run the same way that got me to my current PR. I don't have exact splits but I went out comfortably and went through 400m in 55. high and had a strong 200m. I thought about making a pass that I still regret not making about 500m, but I just waited and kicked hard the last 150m, finishing in 1:52.7, making my 2nd 200m somewhere around 56 high. I again felt like I had more in the tank, and had I been able to run one more race I feel as though I could have shaved some more time off, but we'll never know.

I'm mentally not great at the mile/1500m, and my 1500m does look bad but keep in mind I only ran it twice, early in my season, that year. And both times weren't ideal conditions. I feel as though I could have at least broken 4:00 in the 1500m, but we'll never know that, either.

I hope I answered your question.

Old Man 2 Lapper wrote:

I agree with your there! I have been enjoying reading this thread and had to give you props for saying that. The mistake that most of these guys do is take in too much information and apply what they hear like a buffet...a little here from this and a little here from that. I ran sub 1.50, quite a bit faster and see what he's doing as a base as decent but not developing what it takes to actually reach his goal. I wish him the best and if he does break 1.50 he'd be at 1.48 if he actually listened a little better.

How did you train?

To go under 1:50 it requires the ability to maintain decent speed over the entire 800, and delay the onset of performance sapping lactate IE you slow down at a lesser rate over the last 200 then your competitors. These days the estimated anaerobic/aerobic distribution in the 800 is around 60/40. Thus the training should be focused on developing the aerobic capacity in the off season but with more focus on anaerobic as the season approaches, leading up to the track season. That means intervals. Tempo paced intervals at varying distances (150 to 600) with shorter recovery jogs, also harder, faster intervals (200 to 400) with longer recovery jogs. No track close by? Run the intervals on the roads with a stopwatch, and use time as the interval regulator. Or better yet, try and find a local club with a coach so at least you can go there for the interval work. The off days you can do on your own. The other issue is the 400 speed. I'd also work on that, as its easier to average just under 55/lap if you have 48 sec. 400 speed vs 49 and change.

I was a low mileage animal and came up from sprints/jumps. In high school was still doing a power event like high jump or long jump. I ran xc but was never a huge factor in the big meets 16 low 15 high but that kept my base honest. We raced on Tuesday's and the invites were normally Saturday. In college I was running track into the summer so skipped the xc base and trained through indoor. I used alot of speed and found mt sweet spot in mileage around 30 mpw. Oh, if you're going to ask, sub 4.10 for a mile in a workout so even without 70mpw I could still do that.

Old Man 2 Lapper wrote:

I was a low mileage animal and came up from sprints/jumps. In high school was still doing a power event like high jump or long jump. I ran xc but was never a huge factor in the big meets 16 low 15 high but that kept my base honest. We raced on Tuesday's and the invites were normally Saturday. In college I was running track into the summer so skipped the xc base and trained through indoor. I used alot of speed and found mt sweet spot in mileage around 30 mpw. Oh, if you're going to ask, sub 4.10 for a mile in a workout so even without 70mpw I could still do that.

You were a very talented runner! 30mpw and that mile time? Damn..

Thanks, I definitely had fun in my time!

Week ending in 1/13

Sunday Small all-comers meet at Slippery Rock University.

800m in 2:01.3

1600m in a tactical 4:45

4x200m: Split of ~25 flat.

**Will talk about the meet below

Monday 9 miles @ 7:26 pace on the treadmill.

**Hamstrings very sore.

Tuesday 12.6 miles @ 7:18 pace.

**Roads were pretty slushy and slick in a lot of spots. Still pretty sore. Just happy to get over 90 minutes on my feet.

Wednesday Off.

**Hamstring still a little tender and had been lacking sleep the past few days so I got some extra sleep today.

Thursday 4 mile tempo @ 5:42 pace + 6x10 second hill sprints + Lifting.

**Splits: 5:47, 6:00 (uphill), 5:48 (downhill), 5:14. Goal of the workout was to run comfortably hard then push the last mile a little bit. Finished up right by a hill so I could do some hill sprints. Only about 2.5-3.0% grade. Didn't feel great in the first three miles but honestly felt better once I opened it up that last mile.

Lifted after and did: Hex Bar deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts, pull ups, dumbbell incline bench, and calf raises on the smith machine.

Friday 5 miles @ 7:24 pace on the treadmill + Core

** Just a nice recovery day. About 10min worth of core after.

Saturday All on the treadmill. 3 mile warmup. 2xMile with 60s rest follwed by 8x2min repeats with 90s rest. Lifted after.

Times/paces: 5:28, 5:25

First 4 two min repeats @ 5:00 pace, 5/6 @4:57 pace, 7/8 @ 4:55 pace.

**Felt pretty good. Could have surely done the whole workout with 60s rest but I figured I'd be cautious since it is over 5 miles of work anyways.

Didn't have a lot of time to lift so I just did step-ups, bench, Bulgarian split squats, and some core.

Week total 48 miles

All in all I'm pretty happy with this week. Volume not too high but it's still an okay volume for 6 days of running.

The meet on Sunday is at a 200m indoor track, but it is an atrocious track to run on. It is basically a gym/wrestling floor and you aren't allowed to wear spikes. Also, over half the track is basically run in a tunnel, so there's no visibility and you run uncomfortably close to a brick wall in lane 1. I believe the facility record is a 1:59 set by a guy with a PR of 1:49. Obviously he wasn't in 1:49 form or effort when he set that record but it does go to show it is a slow, tough track to run on. There's some younger kids and some older guys but i'd say 80% of the competitors are high schoolers. I won the 800m by 7 seconds despite being boxed in by some ambitous high school kids on the second lap.

Splits of: 30.X, 29.X, 31.X, 30.X. I probably pushed a little too hard on that second lap to get around those kids, so the race wasn't as smooth as I would have liked, but it was a good rust buster/workout.

I didn't feel well for the mile and decided I'd just sit and do what I needed to win the race. Some kid was trying to stretch it out from 800m out and honestly, the pace was uncomfortable, but I held on and put 2 seconds between us in the last 50m.

10 minutes after the 1600m we threw together a 4x200m for fun / some sprint work. idk my official split but I believe it's around 25 flat, which I'm okay with right now considering.

The weather was pretty frigid early in the week, and it warmed up to 60 degrees F by Thursday, then we had an ice storm last night and it's back in the teens again. Supposed to warm up by the end of next week again so hopefully I can get to the track.

This was kind of a ranting post, so if you have any questions let me know.

Recent Races of Significance

-5k: 15:49 PR. Turkey trot road race. (11/23/2017)

-3000m: 9:07 PR. Small indoor meet. (12/2/2017)

-800m: 2:01.3 solo effort on gymnasium track (1/7/2018)

Week ending in 1/20

Sunday 8 miles @ 7:35 pace

** Pretty cold and snowy out. Just a nice recovery day.

Monday 15min on the rowing machine, 25min on the elliptical, 5min run, then 8x70m sprints with ~3min rest. Lift after.

**Got into the local middle school today after hours with my Dad who coaches. Used the hall way for the sprints and some of their cardio equipment because this was meant to be my low mileage recovery type day.

Lifting was: Box squats, romanian dead lifts, a few hang and power cleans and some muscle ups.

Tuesday 11.3 miles @ 7:41 pace.

**One of the more miserable runs I've been on in some time. Wind chill near 0 degrees and as it got dark during the second half, it got COLD. Roads pretty icy/snowy the whole way. Just glad to be on my feet for almost 90min.

Wednesday 5.1 miles @ 7:30 pace

** Should have run more but was lacking motivation. Pretty cold and icy again.

Thursday 5 mile tempo @ 5:46 pace on the YMCA treadmill.

**First two miles were 5:56 and 5:50 but my last 3 were around 5:40 with my last two under 5:40 pace so not too bad. Mentally wasn't doing well, though. Did some light lifting, a couple plyos and core after.

Friday Off

** Wasn't initially planning on taking today off but my right foot had some dull pain on the top, and since today was going to be a recovery day anyways I figured It's be smart in the long run to just take it off and get some extra sleep.

Saturday 2 mile tempo in 10:52 (5:34, 5:18). Then half mile jog to the 6% hill that I used for my hill workout last month. Did 3x(4x200m) hill reps.

**First set at tempo pace with jog down recovery (~1:00), second set at 5k pace with jog down recovery + 30 seconds (1:30), third set at mile pace with jog down + 60 seconds rest (2:00).

(41, 44, 42, 42) (34, 36, 37, 36) (32, 32, 32, 29).

Second half of the hill still had slush / ice on it so I opted out of pushing hard on these.

Week total: 40.2 miles

Pretty low mileage this week, but I'm trying not to get too caught up in the numbers for this season and worry more about the quality / volume of quality as I go on. February will likely be a higher month for overall volume because I don't think I'll really be doing much racing, but it won't be significantly higher and I won't be worrying about any number specifically. I am running a meet his upcoming weekend at the Spire institute, which is a beautiful 300m track. I plan to race the Mile, the 600m, and the 200m, with the mile being the main goal (since it is the first race). The other two races will simply serve as workouts, and to have fun with. The goal is to at least run sub 4:30, which doesn't sound fast but the year I ran 1:52 I raced the mile 3 times indoors and ran 4:31-4:33 all three times. I'd like to try to break 1:24 in the 600m but we'll have to wait and see how much the mile took out of me, and Ideally I'd like to be under 25 in the 200m since I'm sure my legs will be fried, but if I feel okay I should be able to run low to mid 24 without much trouble.

ThatAverageRunner wrote:

Friday Off

** Wasn't initially planning on taking today off but my right foot had some dull pain on the top, and since today was going to be a recovery day anyways I figured It's be smart in the long run to just take it off and get some extra sleep.

A good decision. I should've taken more days off in the past.

I like the way you are "using what you've got".

Don't have access to a good track? Fine, do hill reps.

Need speed in the future, fine, do short sprints now, since you won't be getting any great stuff on the track anyway.

I'm wondering what happened to the long tempos you spoke about early in the thread. It seemed those were your bread and butter to improvement before. I didn't read every post, so maybe I missed them.

CoachB wrote:

I like the way you are "using what you've got".

Don't have access to a good track? Fine, do hill reps.

Need speed in the future, fine, do short sprints now, since you won't be getting any great stuff on the track anyway.

I'm wondering what happened to the long tempos you spoke about early in the thread. It seemed those were your bread and butter to improvement before. I didn't read every post, so maybe I missed them.

I've been doing them sparingly throughout. I did more in the fall and early winter but I have been phasing them out for a little more quality, since my main goal is to improve my 800 and lower speed this training cycle. Once May hits and I run my last meet for this spring I'm going to switch gears and try to go back to building up a high volume base this summer since I haven't really done that since the summer before my senior (2015) year when I saw a lot of improvement.

Last spring, for many reasons, I didn't get in any real quality work other than a workout here or there, so I'd like to work on that since it was something I lacked before. It's a little too late in this season / cycle for me to ramp up the mileage and rebuild a big base while simultaneously trying to hone my 400/800 speed.

But you are right, the long tempos were paramount for me and I don't want to lose all endurance. I'll be sprinkling them in, especially throughout February where I don't really plan to run any important races or anything. But they'll be back in full action at the end of next summer after I get my mileage back up. One step at a time, though.

Recent Races of Significance

-5k: 15:49 PR. Turkey trot road race. (11/23/2017)

-3000m: 9:07 PR. Small indoor meet. (12/2/2017)

-Mile: 4:20.18 PR at the Spire Institute (1/27/2018

-600m: 1:23.33 debut after the mile at Spire (1/27/2018)

Week ending in 1/27

Sunday 9.2 miles @ 7:28 pace + strides

**Just a slower recovery day after the workout Sunday. Strides felt good, though.

Monday 5 miles @ 7:30 pace on the treadmill + lifting

**Lacking motivation today. Happy I got in any running at all. Lifting: hex bar DL, DB incline bench, hang cleans, Bulgarian split squats, core.

Tuesday 8 mile progression run. Splits: 7:26, 6:56, 6:20, 6:05, 5:46, 5:43, 5:20, 5:14. +4x80m strides after.

**Didn't think I was going to feel good today but I ended up feeling pretty good so I just let it roll. Maybe pushed a little too hard the last couple miles but I don't go over the red line very often at all so I thought this was an appropriate time to.

Wednesday 6.8 miles @ 7:21 pace

** Just an easy recovery run in the snow

Thursday 5 miles @ 7:42 pace + 5x50m hill sprints.

**Hill sprints two days out from a meet are my go to these days.

Friday Pre Meet 5 miles @ 7:30 pace. Did dynamics and strides after.

Saturday Spire Midwest Open. Mile PR in 4:20.18 and 600m debut shortly after in 1:23.33. 11 second PR in the mile.

Week total: 47 miles

All in all this week was a little lack luster with only two hard efforts, but I did want to perform well at this meet since it is probably one of the only indoor meets I'll be going to this year. The progression run on Tuesday ended up being pretty good, especially the last 5 miles. Hard progression runs like that are something we did a few times my senior year of track. Other than that I just did some hill sprints thursday to 'wake up' my legs and CNS without overdoing it. Doing this two days out from a race I want to perform well at has worked 5/5 times now so it's safe to say it's one of my new pre race 'rituals'.

Now for the meet itself: For anyone who is unfamiliar, Spire is a 300m track and in my opinion, one of the nicest tracks in the entire country. So that certainly helped me. This was a large meet, with well over 100 people in the men's mile alone. I managed to sneak into the 2nd fastest heat with my seed time of 4:24. I got in a decent warmup despite the facility being pretty crowded. I was nervous before the race but not incredibly so. The race went off and I found myself slotted in lane 1 somewhere near the back 1/3 of the pack. As the race went on, I slowly passed people as they would start to fall off the pace and by the last lap I found myself in around 3rd place. I was able to push pretty hard and get into 2nd place and kick with this kid from buffalo, but I couldn't get by him the last 50m and I ended up taking 2nd in the heat. I don't know all of my splits, which I think actually helped me. The only splits I did see were 34 seconds for 209m, ~2:13 for 809m, 2:45 for 1009m, and 3:50 at 1409m. So I had some significant negative splits going ~2:13-2:07 and honestly if felt really easy.

About 1.5-2 hours after the mile I ran the 600m for the first time ever. I didn't really have any expectations since I ran the mile pretty hard earlier, and I have been doing very little speed work under 5k pace thus far in my training. I went out pretty conservatively, relative to the field, and came through 300m in 41. After that I pushed pretty hard and spent the rest of the race picking off the people who went out too hard. I finished 3rd in 1:23.33 with 41/42 300m splits. I'm pretty happy with this effort, especially since it is after the mile, and because my 400m speed probably isn't fantastic currently.

All in all, good meet. I'm really excited moving forwards and getting ready for the outdoor season. I might be able to run faster this year that I originally thought.

Ayyy you finally have what it takes to break 4:24. I know that hasn't been the goal in a long time but it's still cool to see you get it after all this time.

Not to steal this guys thread. But I wanted to ask about the tempo paced Intervals and the faster Intervals.

For the tempo intervals would you start out doing something like 200s w/ 100m jog in 30, then progress to 300s w/ 100 jog In 45 and then eventually 400-500m with 100-200m jog in 60-75ish?

And faster intervals would be 200s w/ 200 slow jog in 28-26, 300s with 300 jog in 40 and 400s w/ 400 slow jog in 57-55?

NICE BOY wrote:

Ayyy you finally have what it takes to break 4:24. I know that hasn't been the goal in a long time but it's still cool to see you get it after all this time.

I thought same thing. So cool. Well done!

That sounds pretty reasonable, however I'd reduce the rest interval for the faster session to the same as the slower. I'd just do way more reps and sets of each on the slower. The goals being to develop the strength to carry the speed over a longer distance, and to push the anaerobic systems to faster recovery.

Ayyyyyy See that mile pr keep working man, rooting for you!

OLD SMTC SOB wrote:

Tupperville wrote:

Not to steal this guys thread. But I wanted to ask about the tempo paced Intervals and the faster Intervals.

For the tempo intervals would you start out doing something like 200s w/ 100m jog in 30, then progress to 300s w/ 100 jog In 45 and then eventually 400-500m with 100-200m jog in 60-75ish?

And faster intervals would be 200s w/ 200 slow jog in 28-26, 300s with 300 jog in 40 and 400s w/ 400 slow jog in 57-55?

That sounds pretty reasonable, however I'd reduce the rest interval for the faster session to the same as the slower. I'd just do way more reps and sets of each on the slower. The goals being to develop the strength to carry the speed over a longer distance, and to push the anaerobic systems to faster recovery.

Ok makes sense and I agree. So then for faster sessions you would have to do them in groups in order to do them with the shorter jog rest. Like 3x3x300 w/ 100 jog rest and 400 jog rest between sets..

For the slower sessions you wouldn’t break it up? Just do 12-16x 200 with 100 jog, then 10-12x 300m with 100 jog, and 8x 400 w/ 100 jog. For these can you just do standing 30-60 seconds rest also?

Seems like the general pattern of keeping the easy days very easy (7:30 is pretty slow for a now 4:20 miler) is working out for you. Any race plans for February?