Girl 800 meter runner

I coached a girl that ran 19:38 for 5k cross country and ran 2:13 for 800. So yes you can...

If this is indeed a HS girl (or boy it doesn't matter really) I cannot stress the importance of communicating with your coach. Did you tell him all the things you said here... that you want to get more organized, etc? There is much more to a training plan than just putting one together. We would need to see what you did last season and know what worked...and what didn't. Are you more of a sprinter (unlikely with a 19 min 5k for XC) or distance runner? What did you do last year? What worked? What didn't? What races are you peeking for?

I know Women who ran sub 2 minutes for 800 and they would run 6-8 miles 3 days a week with a long run of 10-12 in the off season /early season. They would do mile type workouts with lots of drills and a touch of speed. Remember you want to peek in May. There are plenty of 800 workout ideas out there, do a search.

My advice:

1. Talk to your coach and be very clear in your goals. Ask him to make you a specific plan based on what you did last year.

2. If you ran cross country you need a break. If you are a female and only a sophomore you do not have the mileage and base from running the last 6-8 years to maintain the fitness and intensity to race for 12 months of the year. Take a few weeks off and rebuild!

3. Do what you know works for you... Only you know what took you to 2:16. Don;t be afraid about being underdeveloped. College coaches don't like the club runner who has reached their potential (I know, I am one). These athletes generally burnout and don't improve very much, though there are always exceptions to the rule. Don't be afraid to do something different like bounding and drills, maybe those football drills helped you to your 2:16, you never know!

Lastly, advice from a message board is not going to help you, only confuse you. Everyone if different and has different talents. There is no cookie cutter workout for greatness. You could have 5 runners do the exact same workouts at the exact same paces and come out with 5 different results. Just the nature of our sport.

Hey! Let me know if you need help with anything. I had disappointing track seasons until I started training myself. I read tons of books on training and seeked tips online and I pr'd in every event from the 400meters to the 5k. I probably could have ran faster in the longer races had I not started out so fast. I would be more than happy to help you though! (:

Long time coach.

#3) What a terrible attitude. What makes you think that club-coached athletes necessarliy "have reached their potential" prior to University? There a great many HS programs that coach their athletes no differently in terms of development (York, F-M, Saratoga, etc.)than would a knowledgeable club coach.

I can name a multitude of club-coached athletes - like recent NCAA XC champ Sheila Reid - who have gone on to great success as athletes in the NCAA (Kevin Sullivan, Nathan Brannen to name a couple) and after. Please don't paint everyone with one brush (as you seem to be doing) because of your poor experiences. That says more to me about you (and possibly your lack of coaching expertise, and I don't care about your resume) if you have that attitude. Kids plateau for various reasons, your job is to help get athletes past that and to another level - not always easy, but that is the sign of a good coach, not one who has already formed opinions on individuals based on their own short-comings as a coach.

Alright, recruit the burnt out kid who has reached their potential and already runs 100 mpw over the kids who doesn't have the best coaching, runs 30 mpw and hits the same times. Got it, thanks! I am sure that NCAA title is around the corner!

Totally agree with the above post. Also take into account that your body will likely change from now until the time you are a senior. Your times might get slower for a season or so, but don't let it get you down. This happens to a lot of girls who are fast right at the start of high school.

800 help wrote:

Does anyone have a good training plan for a girl 800 meter runner whose PR is 2:16. Last year I was a freshmen.

I run around 35 miles a week.

I'm doing indoor and the state meet is in Feb.

I also plan on doing outdoor and the state meet is in early May.

I don't really have a coach. He lets us do what we want and he focuses on the football players because he is also the football coach. He is nice but doesn't seem to want to spend time with the other runners on the team who are not directly involved with football.

Should I lift? Plyomatrics? Bounding drills?

Any help would be appriciated.

Unfortunately there are a lot of people on here who can offer bits and pieces. One of the best things you can do is to start educating yourself in the sport. Jack Daniels' Running Formula (second edition) has a lot of very valuable information to help lay out a comprehensive plan and become knowledgeable about key aspects of training and recovery. If you have problems getting through it, find a coach or reasonable bright adult in your life to help try and figure it out. Jack also posts on here from time to time, so, if you want to get a little better idea of something he talks about, you can just pick his brain. Hope you have a great year. You've still got probably a week or two to pull together a 5-6 month plan that would take you right through state championships.

Thank you for all of the advice so far.

Most of you are telling me to go talk to my coach.

I don't think you really understand. he is a football coach. During indoor and outdoor he ONLY trains the football players. The female athletes are lucky to get a few words with him every once and awhile.

I am by myself.... the next fastest female is around 2:50.

I agree that some of the workouts worked last year. We did lots of bounding drills and shorter speed drills. But there was no organization. it seemed to me he made up workouts on the spot and then told the females to do half of the work that the guys did.

I'm just looking for advice on how things should be organized. Maybe a general weekly plan. I'm new at this and feel my coach really doesn't care even though he is a nice person just not to focused on others besides the football players.

After all he did say I could do whatever workouts I wanted.

My outdoor state meet is in early may...I should have no problem making the indoor statemeet without trainig which in in early Feb.

I just want to do better and I have no real idea how to do this.

If their is a book I should buy for 800 runners then please tell me. Or just a general idea on weekly training would be helpfull.

As you can see, there are lots of opinions. If you are interested there was a thread on here two years ago called sub 1:50. It has excellent advice for 800 training (not just for 1:50 training)

I will offer you a couple more general tips;Train for the 1500 as well as the 800,even if 800 is going to be the main race.

In my opinion, you are too young to worry about drills and bounding-just run and develop your aerobic system.

Good luck and post some results in the season.

For structuring a week, you may want to start with planning 2 hard workouts a week. One more distance/threshold work and one short/speedy day with easy days in between. For the 800 you want to be able to outlast people and outkick people so focus on training both systems.

Also, the plyos and drills your football coach gave you are probably good. Especially, considering your pr from last year.

As far as lifting weights goes, ABSOLUTELY a great idea. Twice a week is optimal and don't be lifting puny distance kids weights, try to build yourself up. Contrary to some beliefs won't get huge and you'll get some major strength for your race. Strength is speed. Good luck

If you are hoping to peak for the outdoor state meet in May, my advice would be to sort of "train through" indoor in order to focus on building a base during the winter/early spring. It sounds like you never really have ran solid consistent mileage and built up an aerobic base yet, which makes your 2:16 REALLY impressive. You don't have to do super high mileage, especially as an 800m runner, but getting in a good amount of aerobic running for an extended period of time will really help you improve your endurance, which should contribute to bringing your already very good 800 time down quite a bit more. I, for example, can run about a minute faster than you over 5k, but couldn't possibly come within 10sec. of your 800 time, so I'd say you have a ton of potential to go faster with improved endurance, even if you are more of a speed-oriented (i.e. 400/800) type person.

Over the next couple months, I'd work on gradually (emphasis on the gradually!) increasing your mileage, with mostly easy runs, but really running based on how you feel-faster on days you feel good, slower on those you don't. I'd start with about your typical mileage week from cross and add a few miles each week from there, taking a "down" week of decreased mileage whenever you feel like you need it but always working toward the end goal of increasing the miles. I don't know much about your background so I can't say what would be best for you to top out at, but just try it out and see what works for you I guess. Heck, for a young female 800 runner, it could be as low as 20-something mpw, but it could also be a lot higher, it just depends on you and what you can handle. No matter what, though, they key in my opinion is consistency.

Try to run on soft surfaces as much as possible, do strides several times a week to keep in touch with your speed, and after a few weeks maybe add in a weekly tempo run of 15-25min or some informal hill work (during base training I like to do hilly mid-length runs that I treat as sort of a "hill fartlek", with the hard segments of the fartlek being pushing the pace on the uphills). Weights a couple times a week would probably be beneficial (high weight, low reps), as well as core work. Toward the end of indoor you probably want to taper off the mileage a little for the bigger races, but until then I'd just treat it as a base phase. Outdoor then would be when you'd really start doing race-specific training, and that's a little more complicated. It would really be a lot better if you had a real coach. It's a shame that a 2:16 sophomore girl only has a football coach to work with!

Oh and by the way good luck!:)

Thank you everyone for you help.

Never broke 20 minutes in the 5k and ran 2:14 in the 800. You're so dumb.

If she can bear through that Wall Of Text, she will run 2:05 on sheer will alone.