20x400m workout for high schoolers

This workout is ridiculous without understanding the context. The only reason I would ever do 20x400 is if my kids were slacking on a run and I found out they were walking and I would have them do it at a high end pace in the outside lanes and walk to the 400 meter start in say lane 8 for recovery.

Doing this with freshmen is troublesome especially with no guide for pace.

Is it combined 20x400 between two people? That would make a little more sense. Give them goal times and the team closest to the goal time wins.

Kinda standard fare for 800-2 mile HS athletes. I never had the exact workout, but often did heart-rate 400s (4-5 times a season). In that workout, we ran 400s actually between 1 and 2 mile pace (at the time for me it was 72-75 seconds). You would run a quarter, check your HR at the end, and run another as soon as your HR drops 5 beats in 10 seconds (maximum rest was 2 minutes). If your HR did not drop in 2 minutes, you'd get pulled by the coach, or if you missed your interval on consecutive reps. No specified reps, but you would go until your HR would not drop the specified amount. If you weren't fit, you would get in maybe 12, with rest ranging from 30 seconds to 1:45, and maybe you'd miss your interval (which was specific to each runner). The most I did was 24...But I had wised up by that time, and just barely made the split on each rep (running 74s)...but the last 4-6 of that day were honestly one of my few "seeing God" type workouts. I usually only got in 18-20.

OP here. To answer some questions. Yes, each kid runs 20. Boys paired with girls so girls get shorter recovery. There are no pacing guidelines given. They haven't done any kind of time trial to even know what mile/2 mile pace might be. No, I don't criticize him to my daughter. I just give her pacing advice so his workouts don't wreck her.

Looks like I hit a nerve with the high school coaches on here who will always defend the coach regardless of how incompetent they might be.

Another idiot coach? wrote:

Looks like I hit a nerve with the high school coaches on here who will always defend the coach regardless of how incompetent they might be.

No. You hit a nerve with people who reasonably expect someone with a problem to take the problem directly to the source of the problem, in this case, the coach. Instead, you hide behind your keyboard, flaming away at someone who has no idea you are upset, all the while passively aggressively undermining the coach's efforts by asserting your dominance over the one thing you feel like you can still control in your life: your daughter. Typical Helicopter Parent.

Well, it has provided us some entertainment.

And he is right, so there is that.

Another Idiot Parent? wrote:

Another idiot coach? wrote:

Looks like I hit a nerve with the high school coaches on here who will always defend the coach regardless of how incompetent they might be.

No. You hit a nerve with people who reasonably expect someone with a problem to take the problem directly to the source of the problem, in this case, the coach. Instead, you hide behind your keyboard, flaming away at someone who has no idea you are upset, all the while passively aggressively undermining the coach's efforts by asserting your dominance over the one thing you feel like you can still control in your life: your daughter. Typical Helicopter Parent.

Not really. He was getting feedback from a group of supposed experts to see if it's something he should take up with coach. Perhaps you'd prefer the approach of just calling the coach every time he doesn't agree with him whereas the OP decided to do a little legwork to see if he was misguided.

The relay aspect of this is what kind of bugs me. Kids are going to be racing each other which is going to make a reasonable pace almost impossible.

handle flyer offer wrote:

Well, it has provided us some entertainment.

And he is right, so there is that.

You have gotten one side of the story, so there is that.

Agree with the entertainment aspect, although, I don't think you are I were entertained at the same aspects.

If you have a complaint, go to the source.

If you have a compliment, go to the source's boss.

I would rather have a parent who talks with me regularly, than one who stirs up trouble. I have turned the Communicating Dad into a Team Dad (and even an assistant coach). Communication solves a lot of problems. A lot.

Telling the daughter what pace to run, as if the inexperienced daughter that he is describing has any concept of what "10k pace" is, is not "doing a little legwork to see if he was misguided". It is undermining the coach.

My longest run in high school xc was 6.5 miles. We did a warmup, 4x1200m, and cool down. I ran 16:08 and was top 15 at our state meet. Miles are over-rated. Also won 5 state medals in track never running more than 30 mpw

Helicopter OP-

You have to be wrong. No coach is going to want to stand around and watch boys and girls run 40 laps around a track. That's going to be 90 minutes of standing around at least. The faster kids get less of a workout and be done in about 70 minutes. the slower kids will be there all night.

It's the track equivalent of busy work. It's like making them write their spelling words 5x each. The kids are busy and quite, the teacher can kick back.

first thought was each kid ran 10, so bummed to hear that's not the case.

update us on Friday with what the workout actually looked like. I wouldn't be surprised if the coach stops the workout after 20 or 25 minutes when all the runners have slowed down.

My HS coach had us do this workout right around the third week of spring/outdoor practice every year. The first time I did it, it was absolutely scary, but we were told we could take one interval off for recovery if needed, if we needed to take two we shouldn't come to practice the next day (didn't happen, was just a way to get 35 HS kids to shut up and listen).

I found out later that it was really a workout to determine who wanted to run track for the school each season. Our entire team was over 120 with distance making up 30% of that. The intervals were 3:00, and we were instructed to go at whatever pace we could maintain over that period. I remember some people running each lap at around 2:45, have :15 seconds rest then go into the next. It didn't matter what your time was as long as you were showing effort to be there. Our assistance coach wrote down all of our times to help those with pacing telling them to take it slower, speed it up, keep it the same. It taught us a lot about pacing, and was one of my favorite memories of team building/bonding during HS.

This is specifically addressed to the OP, and not meant to hijack this thread in any way. If you are not the OP, do not comment on this post, please :)

I suggest that you watch the documentary "Trophy Kids" on Netflix ASAP. You might learn something about yourself

Nobody really gets it wrote:

My longest run in high school xc was 6.5 miles. We did a warmup, 4x1200m, and cool down. I ran 16:08 and was top 15 at our state meet.

Miles are over-rated. Also won 5 state medals in track never running more than 30 mpw

It says a ot that you were happy being top 15 and not top 5. There is a difference between the worshipping of miles that some people have and doing reasonable amount of training. If after 3 years of HS you can't run 40-50mpw over the summer, your program has issues

If Cassidy could do 60 x 400 as a collegian, these kids can certainly handle just 20 X 400.

16x400m to 20x400m with 2:00 rest was a staple work out for me back in high school. Freshman year, I think I only had to do it once after a couple months of base work. By the time I was a senior we were doing this workout once every week or two at mile to 2 mile pace as soon as the snow melted off the track.

It is only 4 to 5 miles, which is not that far. If your daughter is running it at 10K pace, I would say it would be an easier workout for her than a tempo run.

We had these types of workouts in high school. The top runners would run 20x400, the mid levels 16x400 and low levels 12x400. We all finished about the same time because the runners doing 20 reps could pretty much run their recovery and the low levels would do the walk/jog. We weren't allowed to walk recoveries, but they were allowed to jog slow enough that's the same as walking. Long story short, if you want your daughter to be a top runner she needs to do the 20x400. Freshman usually struggle with pacing (i.e. may have a 20 second spread on their fastest and slowest laps) but she will learn and get stronger and the spread will shrink.

To be honest, if you told me to run 10k pace at anytime in high school I wouldn't have a clue what you are talking about. If your daughter has run a 10k before then not sure what the issue is here.