Will one sprint workout a week and mileage increase my sprint speed this summer?

Hard 200's is not speed. You can finish tempo runs with 200's at 1500m pace. You should do 6-10 x 8-10 second hill sprints or 60-80 hill sprints. I tell my distance runners to think about running at 400m speed. They know that speed as hard, but they still run smooth. While sprinting you want to stay relaxed and efficient. Do this workout after a hard warm-up with drills. You can finish with heavy weight lifting, plyometric jumps, med ball throws, depending on your age, skill set and resources. This type of work will help develop strength and power, which will result in increased speed.

Do fast 100's with long rest instead of 200's. This way you'll be working more on top speed and a little bit of top speed endurance (since humans can only all out sprint for 7ish seconds before we start to slow).

Doing fast 200's is more of a mid distance workout and while it may help your speed, it's something you probably don't need much of over the summer assuming you're a distance runner. 100's will get the job done better anyways.

Everything in the above is very good advice. Personally, I'd alternate between going on the flat and on a hill, and start doing these reps around 4-5 seconds, and over a month work up to 8 or so seconds, then alternate weeks doing 6-8 second repeats with 12-15 second repeats that challenge more speed endurance (still also mixing in both the flat and hills). At the training age and speed you're at, even going up to 8 seconds for a rep is getting into speed endurance territory, so 6-8 seconds should be the edge of top speed work for you.

I'd also add that 8 x 200 all out, even with a full recovery is an absolutely mammoth workout, and even anything close to that isn't something to try unless you know what you're doing.

Hmmmmmh wrote:

If I choose one day a week to do a sprint workout and then just run like I normally would on other days, would my sprint spend increase a lot over a ten week summer? Something simple, an idea I have in mind is starting out by doing 2x200m all-out on full rest the first week and by the last week be doing 8x200m all-out on full rest (ideally my times would drop). I have no clue if that's a good idea or not. Currently my fastest 200 is something like a 28-29 (end of workout). I'm going into my junior year and I'm tired of getting kicked around by other guys on short stuff. What else should I try?

Not a bad idea, but you may wish to consider something even shorter than not only 200m but even 100m. Here's a very good thread (5x60m w/ full recovery):

I quite obviously don't know too much about sprinting. Should I try to do something like 2x5x60m on 2:30 rest with 5:00 between the sets for the first 6 weeks of my summer and then be doing something like 8-10x100m for the last four weeks (these ideas were brought up in the other thread linked). Also, I don't have too many hills around so that's not really an option. I do have access to a weightroom 2-3 times a week and there's a track not too far from my house.

Also, should I do these in spikes? Flats? Trainers? Should I try to record my times? Should I go from a standing start or run into it? Would it be okay if I did this in the morning and then went out for another easy 3-5 miles with some strides in the evening? Thanks to all responses.

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Hmmmmmh wrote:

Also, should I do these in spikes? Flats? Trainers? Should I try to record my times? Should I go from a standing start or run into it? Would it be okay if I did this in the morning and then went out for another easy 3-5 miles with some strides in the evening? Thanks to all responses.

At first just do this in trainers. You'd be fine doing it in tempo shoes or even flats if you want, but don't put too much stress on your calves if they're not ready for it.

You'd be fine doing these in the morning (with a warmup and cool down) and then running in the evening. You probably don't need to do strides in the evening if you did sprints in the morning, but if you do, don't push them too fast.

I've had some very good evening tempo runs after doing hill sprints in the morning. I felt like it primed me and got me loosened up to work a different energy system in the evening.

Doing hill sprints, standing start. If you're doing something like 60m or so sprints on the track, you'd be better off doing running starts (unless you're a sprinter who needs to work on starting 100m/200m races.

You can time these if you like, but if you're doing reps less than 100m then hand timing yourself will only be meaningful so you can compare to other reps. And even then, it's so short that it's hard to really compare. I time 100m sprint reps but anything shorter becomes increasingly inaccurate due to hand timing / reaction times.

Good luck. Focus on being smooth and relaxed on any kind of sprint you do. It'll pay dividends.

Hmmmmmh wrote:

I quite obviously don't know too much about sprinting. Should I try to do something like 2x5x60m on 2:30 rest with 5:00 between the sets for the first 6 weeks of my summer and then be doing something like 8-10x100m for the last four weeks (these ideas were brought up in the other thread linked). Also, I don't have too many hills around so that's not really an option. I do have access to a weightroom 2-3 times a week and there's a track not too far from my house.

Hi. You say you are going into your junior year - I presume of high school. I'm a middle-aged geezer, don't run apart from a few strides weekly (though I stay very fit via swimming and strength work) and HAVE never done such short sprint work as 40-70 meter efforts, so keep that in mind. I advocate such efforts in part because I think my training, which focused on 1500m racing though I ran 800m, cross country and 5k road races starting in high school, continuing through my college days and years beyond, was over too narrow a range. In my high school days we never did tempos, while in college, though the coach would post a tempo work frequently, he didn't explain well that doing these all-out defeats the goal of a tempo workout and he never ran with us, tailed us in a vehicle, or recorded our times and heart rates (or some other criterion to measure effort). And never did any coach advocate raw speed development involving efforts of about 40-70m. I feel my training focused way too much on efforts of 200m-600m. Thank goodness for a weekly long run, a decent mileage base, lots of hill work, and typically a weekly weights session, plus body-weight work and some jumping drills (ballistic and plyometric). Later in my college days I switched to 6-days of running/week and would swim as a recovery day. But I would love to have a crack at it all over again with pure speed, tempos, and aerobic work at longer than 600m included.

You stated:

"Should I try to do something like 2x5x60m on 2:30 rest with 5:00 between the sets for the first 6 weeks of my summer and then be doing something like 8-10x100m for the last four weeks (these ideas were brought up in the other thread linked). Also, I don't have too many hills around so that's not really an option. I do have access to a weightroom 2-3 times a week and there's a track not too far from my house."

I would read the 5x60m thread carefully. That's 10 efforts all out. Probably several too many. And 2:30 does not permit enough recovery. 4:00 or 5:00 or longer would be much better.

I have had good results with a weekly hill session for much of the track season and lament that I did not include hills more year round.

Instead of 2-3 weight sessions per week, I would favor 1 weight session plus a balance/body-weight session and/or a medicine ball/jumps session as I favor more variety which gives more varied stimuluses.

Now, you may also likely be preparing for fall cross country. You'll have to figure out how to boost your mileage while including such low mileage work for the raw speed development. Some are arguing or advocating for very little warm-up and cool-down in this current thread ("Dumb question about pure speed workouts and cool-downs.")