Are my coach's workouts too hard?

Yes, this is a lot.

2x (4x400) at mile pace is a good workout.

2x (4x200) at 800 pace is a good workout.

Combining the two is a lot.

Just my opinion, but the advice to just do your own thing is seriously problematic for a high-schooler. High-schoolers depend on their coach for more than just workouts. And most high-schoolers are primarily motivated by the team atmosphere, not just their own goals. Best to keep the relationship intact and work with the coach. A workout can always be run slower..

100% this

One thing I learned over the years of coaching high school is that it's easy to write a workout that is too much. On paper they seem easier, in practice they may be too much especially for someone who spent all day in classes.

I learned to tone them down and things worked out well.

good point

Now (with 40 years of running experience) I never set workouts in stone.

I may have an idea of what I plan to do, but the workout goes as the workout goes. If I start out doing 800's for example, I may get 8 of them done on one particular day - while on another day I may stop after 4. Or I may stop after 4 and drop down to 400's.

The idea of coaches writing up workouts to dispense to athlete with no room for adjustment is ridiculous in my opinion. The coach either needs to be there to see how the workout is going (so that changes can be made) or they need to let the athlete understand that it is ok to flex the workout (based on how how your feel and how it is going).

You might think doing it this way would cause you to bail out more often and do less, but I can say sometimes you do more because you aren't thinking about the fact that you are going to be doing 27 x 400 (for example). Instead you do them one at a time and just see where you go. I did 27 one day (wasn't feeling very good through about 8), then hit the zone. I have also run very high mileage doing this same thing - not planning the mileage - just going day to day. And I have notice that when I try to plan high mileage, it never works out that well. You have to listen to the body...take what it gives you.

When you ran these at Mile and 800m paces what were those actual times compared to your current PRs? This early on it's important to differentiate between race pace or a PR and what your current fitness for a race is.

as an example, say you're a 4:30 mile guy and ran about 2:00 or so for 800 last year give or take.

right now in Jan, I would expect trying to hit 67.5 for a 400 multiple times in a workout and 30s for 200 would be pretty hard. Especially if you're trying to repeat them.

I would suggest backing off a bit and running fast but more within yourself. Something like 70-71s for 400 (4:40-4:45) and running closer to 32s for the 200s.
Those paces should allow you to complete the workout and have a better idea of where your fitness is.

Since you're in highschool, the other big question would be, do you know what it feels like to run certain paces or check a watch as you're coming around? If you run 70 seconds on a 400, you should be at 35 at 200 and come around the first corner at about 17s. If you aren't hitting those splits you're putting too much effort in the wrong places.

Remember "race pace" means the pace you could run in a race right now. It does not mean PB pace, nor goal race pace. So if you just finished cross country, your mile race pace would probably be slower than your PB from last season, and way slower than your goal race pace.

Example. My goal might be to run a 4:45 mile. I just ran a 18:00 5k in XC. My PB from last year was 5:02. With these numbers, I might be tempted to run 4:45 pace in my race-pace workouts, but that is wrong! My current race pace might be even as high as 5:10 - 5:15, because I've mostly been doing endurance work for XC, and possibly am coming back from a small break. I might be much fitter than last year, but that doesn't mean I can run my mile PB with no speed work.

The workout seems normal (but tough this early in the season, especially if you are doing 3 per week). I suspect you are running them at goal or PB race pace, rather than what you could currently race/time-trial right now.

3 workouts per week seems a bit intense (if they are all this hard) unless you are an 800m runner who dabbles in the 1500/1600/mile and don't do a weekly long run.

Yes. Have a conversation with the coach. Say to them, I'm really struggling finishing these workouts. Do you think I'm running the first set too fast? When you say race pace, I interperet it as _______, is that correct? Should I run the first set slower so I can finish the workout?

A good coach would really respect you for this conversation. Don't say "I think the workout is too hard" but rather "This is what happens when I try this workout the way I interperet it, am I doing what you intended? Or am I misinterpeting your presecribed paces?"

the flaw suddenly popped out to me. it's you're asking a miler to do that chunk at mile pace. it's you're asking an 800 guy to do the second chunk at 800 pace. in the offseason before they show up for practice. stop me when you see where this just doesn't work. too soon, literally pegged at future race pace. if i could just show up running practices like it was a mid-season race......pffft.....refutes itself.

you have some pro-authority folks like you have to follow orders no matter what. i think i got this out of my system when i had a coach who wanted us to do 2-1/2 hour practices and 45 minute game warmups, as well as some overwrought summer training plan. and it turned out as long as i showed up fit and passed the 2 mile test, so what about the training plan, and i never suffered in terms of starting for figuring out ways to bring back common sense to the workouts or warm up, other than every so often he seemed to tell a nasty forward to chase me hard and try and slide tackle me that day.

if the coach hands you a piece of paper to work out, and you think for five seconds or even try it once, and it's like, this is batty, time for you to improvise. to make the workouts functional. to get them done. and to get you ready on sensible terms.

if you want to indulge your coach, i think your experience, whether due to holiday fitness or dumb coaching, screams, fewer reps at the right speed, or same reps at an adjusted speed. at least until you are fit. the flaw in asking for season race speed, for race length, in preseason, is obvious. fix it or just do your own thing. i underline that with this kind of coach the test is do you show up in shape and in doing so implicitly follow his orders. if you show up fit enough he just assumes you followed the orders.

i seriously doubt any coach saying race pace means "race pace in the offseason." that contradicts itself. i thought a way out was to do it at 5k pace from last year, as in "recent" race pace, but no, the OP literally said 4x4 at 16 pace, 4x2 at 8 pace. so to me he meant what he said.

if i have been sitting on the shelf all winter how do i even know what my full gas pace is anymore? when i was harping on use this as information, to me, you have to run a few workouts to get in shape to know what the target numbers should be. to refer to race numbers is then bound to be an exercise in frustration. i am not doing midseason numbers and even if i was trying to hit some offseason marker, how do i know what that is day 1.

maybe it's that only in a few weeks is your fitness stable and can you do this by stopwatch, but right now it's more like an effort level. full gas, 80%, jog it.

to placate the folks scandalized by adjusting the workout off what the boss said, tell yourself, when the boss tells me 800/1600 pace before i've had a practice or a race, that's impossible and i kind of have to set my own intermediate targets until i could possibly do what he asks. or, to be fair to the other poster, i reread the task as running full gas that i am capable of today. i don't think that's what he meant, and i think there are some ontological issues in sorting out what full gas means relative to a stopwatch when one hasn't been training. but i think one can fudge that by chasing an effort level and time they can repeat to get to the end and finish the workout.

that's the sincere version. the self-protection version is once i had a XC coach run me into the ground and anemic and blow up a season, when i could feel it going wrong and asked for dispensation, after that, i paid more attention to biofeedback and my sense of what was becoming excessive or exhaustion beyond recovery, and engaged in self-help. this isn't some AAU coach you can voluntarily swap out. this isn't some college coach you can transfer from. work hard but if it gets too much, adjust. the more i have thought about it lately, my error that year with the XC coach was either not pulling the plug on principle, when i thought it was nuts, or engaging in the self help of moderating the pace to offset the overload.

The workout is fine. A bit long, but if the DP (date pace) is light its doable. I think you answered you own question, you clearly don't know your current race pace fitness. That being said, your coach should have a good idea of what your current fitness level is at and should add a few seconds to that since it's early in the track training cycle. The fact you were exhausted is not good, you may be coming down with a cold/flu.

Take it easy, its early!

looking at your PR's this workout is way beyond your ability and development. Build your aerobic engine. Good luck!

sorry- I'm late to the party. The workout itself is fine for most trained runners with a base. 3 mi of broken up intensity for a HS Athlete running 50-60mpw is normally what I target. (5-6% of volume) I'm 60 years old and do workouts like this once a week. The real issue is that the OP feels like he cannot complete the workout- which likely means he either doesn't have the base for it, or is (more likely), doing each of the intervals too intensely. Maybe at his goal paces rather than where he is right now. But- communication is the key.

So much of giving workouts is constant communication with the athletes on how they are feeling. Timing their intervals (making sure they're not too fast). And visually assessing how hard their pushing each one. Pretty hard to get HS boys to slow down. It's ingrained in their souls to push the intensity. (mine too, as I try, and fail, to keep up with them)
Run training is all about 'restraint'.

oh- I'm a certified coach and a high school track and distance coach. As a jazz musician once told me. there are no wrong notes... only wrong ideas.