Are my coach's workouts too hard?

I would say that the workout was sufficient after one set. You accidentally did it perfectly. Your coach clearly cannot be trusted, I'd suggest doing most your workouts slower than your coaches "suggested paces".

I suggest you talk to your coach to drop one speed workout. Remain with two workouts per week,one for speed and one for distance/endurance. Keep the reps and sets as they are and see how your body responds .In my view three workouts per week for a high-school are counterproductive. But I believe your coach I'd reasonable so have a chat with him/her.

OP, your workout is definitely on the harder side for high school, but with the complete rests between sets, it's definitely not too much of an ask from your coach. A classic high school workout that most seniors could handle is 6-8 (or more) 400's at mile pace, with a 400 jog between, followed by some 200's or strides. A good sign that you are running your workout too hard would be if your second set's times are all slower or significantly more difficult. I personally always felt rusty for the first couple 400 workouts of the season (usually done once per week). Your body starts to take a hint after doing it a couple times.

The issue may be the time of the year that you are doing this workout - early January. If you were doing this mid to late season I doubt that you wiould find it that hard. Given that you say that you don't run an indoor season, I'm not sure why your coach is having you do this WO now. I'd rather see you doing tempo runs, tempo reps or something like 6-7 x 800m at 3-mile race pace. And then somespeed i the form of strides and drills.

The amount of volume at this pace is a difficult ask considering the time of year/weather etc. My rule of thumb is 1.5 to 2x Race distance at pace. The full recovery aspect does make it seem more bearable. Your pace is the most important part here. You're likely pushing to hit a goal pace instead of what you're physically capable of. I'd recommend a time trial or use your most recent results to make sure that you don't over train.

What does "full recovery between the two sets" mean? And are you jogging for 90 seconds between reps, or is it standing/walking rest? Also, what's your mileage per week/the rest of your running currently looking like?

Either way, I would recommend slowing the pace down and finding a way to complete the workout - it's always better to be able to do the entire workout instead of barely making it half way before being wrecked. In addition, 3 workouts a week seems to be a bit too much and that lack of recovery could be part of the reason why you're not able to finish some of them.

I'd also recommend not doing so much speed work yet when you're still at least a couple months away from actually racing. Get in some threshold/aerobic work early on and that will allow you to take full advantage of your speed when you really need it. As many elites have said, strength builds speed!

This workout is a workout that is good at indicating what you can currently run for a mile.. not what you hope to in 4-5 months.. 3 workouts a week is crazy most people much less 4-5 months out from peak season.

You need to slow down to at least your mile pr pace. But ideally reduce the number of workouts and just run some mileage winter is for base building and running more than you ever have with decreasing intensity (at your stage in your career)

this. as i noted before, the poster put this up 1/2. the day after new year's. at least where i live schools aren't yet in session. so this was an off-season, off-books workout. think the poster even said the coach "gave to me" the workout. so this is a piece of paper of what to do over the break. we're not even talking official track practice yet, and in some states this could even be coaching "too early."

point being, where i grew up select soccer's state tournament would be 2nd or 3rd week of december and after 20-odd games i'd be feet up in a recliner for the winter resting up. maybe play some pickup basketball or street touch football with friends. i might do a little soccer kickaround or start jogging before spring soccer and track season. but it's been the holidays.

most places track isn't starting until mid-february. assuming the coach can coach you this early, i would take the training plan as encouragement to get in shape. i would take the training results as information. i would take it as i am currently not in shape. if you feel a need to get ready early for yourself and your coach, the coach's plan is a suggestion. i wouldn't show up out of shape if someone gives me an offseason plan. they will be checking out if you show up an out of shape mess, one assumes. my college coach would send training plans then give us a two mile test when we arrived. if you make the cutoff time, he probably won't doublecheck the plan. you will have fulfilled his basic point. if you show up a mess this kind of coach will then go to town on did you do any running or follow my plan or what?

i wouldn't lie but i would do what i can/what i want. if you have a preferred training plan, do it instead. if his is ok but the pacing is unreasonable, adjust the pacing. he's only officially the boss when you start practice, and the real test here is do you show up in the shape he wants. if you do, he won't care how it happened.

in terms of the suggestions about confrontation, i don't see the point. on your own time you can work out the distances or paces you want. and you're probably out of shape from the winter. so you can probably do even his stuff faster after you get in shape and knock off the rust. so i would just work on fitness and building up, and worry about eyeball to eyeball over practice pace after you're sure you're fit and the plan still doesn't work. if he has you working on your own i'd just do what you can/want with it in mind in a few weeks this will start in earnest.

my advice (former HS & collegiate runner here)

1) don’t be afraid to run a little slower than you think you should. Realistically, you won’t be able to go to the well three times a week for the next several months. It’s early January, you’ve got plenty of time to bring your fitness along.

2) it’s normal to tie up during such short interval sessions especially. But such workouts shouldn’t be exhausting you especially with full rest between sets. Consider dialing in other aspects of your training (sleep, slower pace on easy days, iron supplementation) to give your body the best chance of making your key sessions productive.

best of luck!

This thread will help you. You need to improve your aerobic endurance.

Reading the posts on here, there are two issues mixed and you're getting over-complicated training advice.

First, as others pointed out: 1:11/1:12 is silly. That's 4:48 pace, 20s faster than your PR and more than 20s over current fitness. So, before you blame it on your coach, you need to be running a few of his workouts conservatively and NOT faster than the prescribed pace.

Second, it's still very possible the workout is too hard, or more likely the overall weekly load.is too much. But unless you show up trying to run them the right pace for a few weeks, you have a pretty weak stand: "some guys on the internet said it's too much" is easily countered by your coach saying "well, you're not running it the way it's intended". If you add "the internet guys gave me this new weekly plan", that doesn't help at all.

So, try to really run the "right pace" for a couple weeks, keep a diary of how that goes on a daily basis. THEN go talk to your coach and have the discussion based on your evaluation of the last training block, the argument "it's too much" is much more reasonable than pushing back on his training while you're overreaching in the already tough session.

You're getting conflicting advice because the 800 is an in-between event. Metabolically, it's really different from the 400 and from the 800. Arguably, the 800 is the only track event with no other event really like it. Your own performances reflect this. Competitively speaking, your 800 PR is much better than your 400 or especially 1600 m PRs.

So, the sprinter-oriented 800 meter runners think that you just need to run cross-country for endurance then sharpen with intervals the rest of the year. The distance runners, following a classical Lydiard framework, think you need to work on your base then sharpen later in the season. From an energy perspective, the 800 is almost exactly 50% aerobic and 50% anaerobic (5% creatine phosphate and 45% lactate). So either approach could work, depending on the runner.

From what I see, your training makes sense for an 800 meter runner at this time in the season, but you need to slow down your repeats. Start the 400s at 77 then work your way down over the workout. For the 200s, don't focus on the time, so much as "good swing" and "good speed" (look up Johnny Gray). Your total mileage is fine for 800; you may want to gradually bump that to 35 over the next few months. Relatively speaking, your endurance is the weaker component so slowly adding volume is important.

Three workouts a week is fine but you need to run them at an intensity level you can tolerate. Don't perseverate on interval times--the point right now is to get in a good volume of hard work. With three workouts a week, you won't be able to run any of them at max capacity. You'll be too tired. Later on, during the season, the workouts can have more recovery and you can blaze the repeats to build confidence. The main thing now is to have faith that the volume of work will pay off even if the repeats themselves aren't as fast as what you remember doing last season. It's really hard on the body to put in the work and runners doing the right amount of work often see regression the first month or so due to tiredness.

In my own experience, my senior year of high school, I finished the indoor season with a 9:42 2-mile. I rested four weeks, put in 5 hard weeks of training, and started my outdoor season with a 10:42 3200m. I didn't sweat it, just kept pouring in the work, and managed to chop that down to 9:30 within ~7 weeks (a recovery week just before this made all the difference).

Wow! There is a hodgepodge of advice on here. In order to simplify some of this: (1st) You need to feedback with your coach prior to posting for random advice on a message board. For instance, that coach and you may have misfired on that workout for whatever reason. (2nd) Running track workouts alone is extremely difficult and I congratulate you on your motivation and effort to do so. (Lastly) You mentioned that the event you want to emphasize on is the 800 and you goal is to increase your leg speed. Ask your coach about dorsaflex drills, plyometric (fast twitch drills,) and terrain training opportunities for this time of year. Good luck on the umpcoming season.

I think this is the problem. Coach is a dinosaur or just downloaded a workout he read about. My son's coach talked about doing the "Michigan" workout when the boys got back from winter break, to see who was actually had been putting in miles.

My son started ignoring his coach's advice after his sophomore year because of injury concerns, so now he just talks to the assistant coach who left because of the high rate of injury.

This was a workout he did yesterday as he starts preparing for indoor races in a few weeks. (Based on a 4:30 mile goal)
Fartlek workout: 3 sets x (90 sec, 60 sec, 45 sec, 30 sec, 15 sec). 1 min recovery between reps, 2 minutes between sets. 90 sec @ 5 min pace, 60 sec @ 4:50 min pace, 45 sec @ 4:40 min pace, 30 sec @ 4:30 pace, 15 sec @ 4:20 pace.

I don't think the workout is too advanced. If you aren't able to finish the workout it's because you are running too fast for your fitness level. Tweak the pace the next time you run this workout. Run the first set a little slower and see how you feel. You could then increase your pace for the second set, but the most important thing is to complete the workout. It's better (IMO) to complete the workout feeling like you could do a little more than crashing half way through it. Keep in mind that it's still very early in your build up and you can work the pace down over the coming months as your fitness level improves.

A couple common mistakes I see a lot of runners make. Not warming up properly/racing the warmup. Running intervals too hard which results in an ability to finish the workout.

I don't know jack about running but whenever I do track workouts I do more than my usual warmup because the intensities are higher for me (at least) than road training. I'll do 1-2 EZ by feel, not by time, then do longer active stretching (Jay Johnson routine, or parts of it). On my normal EZ runs or even my moderate/LRs I'll just ease into my runs with the first mile being slower and heating those legs up. (Usually even tempo runs start off slower).

For track stuff I'll be focused on drills to warm up even before the actual track workouts.

That is a dumb workout to be doing in January. Dump your coach and get an online one.

Your focus should be tempos, threshold intervals, short reps with 3 times the rest, hill sprints, strides, and overall volume.

The issue here isn't your coach and his workouts. It appears to be the fact that you take your inability to complete the workouts as a personal flaw, and it is sucking the joy out of an activity that you previously enjoyed.

Here is some good news: you don't have to do the workouts. If my hunch is correct, you can even leave the team and train on your own. That's not a flaw...it's actually you standing up for yourself.

Alternately (and if I'm wrong, which is very possible), you can approach your coach and tell him that you are struggling with the workouts and negotiate workouts that benefit you both physically and mentally.

To give you a more direct answer: if you can't complete the workout, then *yes* it is too demanding.