Coach has 4x1600 workout planned. What pace and rest should I do?

That's a really odd decision by your coach, with all due respect to you.

Two choices as I see it.

The first is that you can try to do these at 5k pace with 3:00-4:00 rest. For your group, I think this would be way too challenging because of the number of intervals and because the intervals at your race pace would be a touch too long and I am guessing most of your teammates are slower than you are, so they might be significantly too long for them.

That leaves the second option, which is to do that at your tempo pace with short rest in between. For you, that would be in the 5:50 to 5:55 range with 1:00 to 1:15 rest. Slower teammates would obviously run them a touch slower.

Honestly, as I typed this, the fact that a coach would let a 16 or 17 year old make this decision for other 14 to 18 year olds bothered me more and more. It is really pretty irresponsible of him, regardless of how thoughtful you may be.

Doesn't sound like a coach if he gives a workout without the pace and rest.

Thanks for the advice. I'm pretty sure that he lets me do this because I have done a decent amount of research on running, and he knows very little about coaching. With all due respect to him, he only coaches because he went to school here, and he ran cross country a couple of years. The administration actually needed a new teacher, and they figured they'd get a new coach too.

Regardless, which of those two workouts would be better for this point in the season? We do a lot of continuous tempos as well, and we have a lot of time for rest after this workout.

Note: I know I said I already did a lot of research on training, but obviously I'm open to new ideas all the time. If I question a response it's not because I'm trying to shut you down, but because I'm curious about the reasoning.

All good and fine, but if he has no idea what kind of pace or rest to give you, he has no business dictating the distance.

If you are being forced to do 4 x 1600, make it the second workout. Doubling up on tempo efforts is better than overdoing 5k paced intervals.

Alternatively, maybe you can talk him into letting you cut it down to 4 x 1200, in which case you can do them at 5k race pace with 3:30 jogging rest.

Smoove wrote:

All good and fine, but if he has no idea what kind of pace or rest to give you, he has no business dictating the distance.

If you are being forced to do 4 x 1600, make it the second workout. Doubling up on tempo efforts is better than overdoing 5k paced intervals.

Alternatively, maybe you can talk him into letting you cut it down to 4 x 1200, in which case you can do them at 5k race pace with 3:30 jogging rest.

I would concur on this. 4 x 1200s at 5k pace (sounds like 5:24/mi pace) with long recovery or 4 x 1600 at tempo (around 5:55/mi pace) with short rest.

Hopefully for the OP, the coach learns how to actually give a crap about his runners. If not, the OP needs to buy a couple of running/training books from Amazon.

Thank you for all the advice! He was pretty set on 1600s, but I got it down to 3x1600. I did them in 5:32, 5:23, 5:16 with 4:00 jog/walk rest. I was pretty spent by the end but not trashed so I'm pleased with it.

1: 85, 84, 82, 81

2: 80, 82, 81, 80

3: 78, 80, 80, 78

I successfully negative split the workout, but I couldn't negative split each rep. I still kept pretty even 400 splits within each 1600 so I'm happy.

alabama runner wrote:

Thank you for all the advice! He was pretty set on 1600s, but I got it down to 3x1600. I did them in 5:32, 5:23, 5:16 with 4:00 jog/walk rest. I was pretty spent by the end but not trashed so I'm pleased with it.

1: 85, 84, 82, 81

2: 80, 82, 81, 80

3: 78, 80, 80, 78

I successfully negative split the workout, but I couldn't negative split each rep. I still kept pretty even 400 splits within each 1600 so I'm happy.

I'm a 17:30s guy and I have done 4 x 1600m @5:25 w/ 3 min rest. Your coach clearly isn't pushing you and neither are you.

e.coolguy wrote:

alabama runner wrote:

Thank you for all the advice! He was pretty set on 1600s, but I got it down to 3x1600. I did them in 5:32, 5:23, 5:16 with 4:00 jog/walk rest. I was pretty spent by the end but not trashed so I'm pleased with it.

1: 85, 84, 82, 81

2: 80, 82, 81, 80

3: 78, 80, 80, 78

I successfully negative split the workout, but I couldn't negative split each rep. I still kept pretty even 400 splits within each 1600 so I'm happy.

I'm a 17:30s guy and I have done 4 x 1600m @5:25 w/ 3 min rest. Your coach clearly isn't pushing you and neither are you.

I really want to be able to do that, but in workouts I just don't seem to have the adrenaline that gets me through workouts. I have a teammate who does the same as I do in races who had his a55 kicked by this workout.

I'd like to believe you that I can push myself in workouts more, but perhaps you're underperforming in races?

Maybe you're a crappy racer

That was a solid workout by the OP. Based on your workout, you should be racing faster.

OP, nice workout. Running them all at a consistent 5:23-5:24 and running each split evenly would have been even better.

Workouts are a great opportunity to teach yourself about pace. Keying on the degree to which you drive your arms, lift your knees, bring your heels towards your butt, etc. while running at race pace in workouts will teach you how you should be feeling in races.

Smoove wrote:

That was a solid workout by the OP. Based on your workout, you should be racing faster.

OP, nice workout. Running them all at a consistent 5:23-5:24 and running each split evenly would have been even better.

Workouts are a great opportunity to teach yourself about pace. Keying on the degree to which you drive your arms, lift your knees, bring your heels towards your butt, etc. while running at race pace in workouts will teach you how you should be feeling in races.

He is racing XC and I'm guessing this workout was on a track so no surprise the paces are a little quicker.

You wouldn't happen to be an Alabama runner in the Bham area, would you?

Mtn Dew wrote:

You wouldn't happen to be an Alabama runner in the Bham area, would you?

I won't specify, but regardless if you're in HS then I probably know who you are. Pretty small community.