Don’t feel like you need to confine yourself to even intervals, ex 200s, 400s, 600s, 800s. Try 500s at mile pace first, try 700s. I’m no detective, but by the name I would say look at the Daniels book sitting on your floor and see what he recommends for that type of intensity. That’s a rep, not an interval, and 800m reps at mile pace can be very demanding. If you plan on finishing more than 2 of them, don’t run equal rest to work bout, bump the rest up.
Not An Expert wrote:
Nothing longer than 500m, maaaaybe 600m, at mile pace should be a regular part of the meat of a training cycle for someone training for 3000m or longer.
As our single hard workout the week of our peak 5k XC race in high school we would do 3 x 800m with full recovery (like, 5-6 minutes), with the first one just over mile pace, the second one at mile pace, and the third one with the first 400m at mile pace and we were allowed to blast the final 400m if it felt good. I could see stretching that to 4 x 800 (first one just slower than mile pace, two at mile pace, final one starting at mile pace with the second half blasted) for an experienced runner 1.5-2.5 weeks out from a goal 3k-10k race, too. But both of those would be part of the peaking cycle, not regular training.
If you're looking to do regular mile-pace work as a 5k/10k guy, 200s at the end of tempo workouts, rep workouts of 300s, and 400s as part of multi-pace pyramids are your friends.
Sorry but what's the point in running almost only mile pace and faster as a key session to peak for a 5K XC ? You should absolutely not do that kind of workout during XC season.
cheesewiz wrote:
The longer the interval the harder it’s going to be to physically be consistent with your times in this workout. I remember I had a workout of 4x(600,200) at 800 pace with 2 mins between 600 & 200, 4 mins between sets. I couldn’t complete the 600s past the second set because I’m not an 800 guy and was just gassed.
Lol, I think you made a mistake because, even if you're the best 800guy in the world, even with 20min recovery, it's physically impossible to run 4x(600,200) at 800 race pace.
This workout sounds borderline impossible and like something an evil, semi-braindead high school coach might come up with. A single 800 at true 1 mile race pace is already going to be pretty brutal. Doing a second one should be hell. Any more than that, just why? You're going to be wrecked for the rest of the week. This is the kind of workout that breaks you down rather than build you up.
If you do it at your TRUE mile pace in a training session by yourself it's gonna feel damn hard to do even one. Doing several seems like insanity. Always ask what the purpose of the workout is. It seems like someone who does this is only trying to score macho points.
I agree with the dude who says it's an evil plot by some braindead HS coach. I never understand the people who go deep into the well several times in training and wonder why they don't race to their potential.
Do some 800's at 3000m pace and that's a tough but reasonable workout. But even then, I would not do that more often than once every 10 days or so.
I just checked again and it was “near 800m pace”. I hadn’t run an 800 in two years so I probably went out to quick anyways. I thought it was a pretty silly workout too but the guy who was coaching me has coached something like 3 different state individual champs in 5 years so I just went with it. Possibly the point of the workout was just to go as hard as we could and try to hang on as long as we could because we didn’t do anything hard for a while after, idk tho. Part of coaching is learning from mistakes tho, definitely not trying that one again!
These responses seem to overrate the difficulty of this type of workout.
I was in low 16 shape, probably 4:35-4:40 shape though I didn't race anything short enough in the timeframe to estimate better than that. I did 6x800 in 2:17-2:22, I think the rest was 400 jog plus some standing around and came out to 4:30-5min. Really hard, but not extraordinarily so - I'm confident that I could not have run an all out 800 faster than about 2:07.
Fun times - I tend to do them a little slower than I would do 400 reps - tentatively, 200s are at 800 race pace, 400s at mile goal pace, 800s at mile date pace (1-2 seconds slower than 400s).
Daniels Guy wrote:
If those guys can run a 4:30 mile and only a 16:30 5k, that's probably a 5k XC pr and they're in much better shape on the track. I'm in shape to run 16:00-16:10 on the track.
I think track workouts should be based on track fitness.
Also HS kids have better speed than endurance compared to s more experienced runner.
Rupp fan wrote:
This workout sounds borderline impossible and like something an evil, semi-braindead high school coach might come up with. A single 800 at true 1 mile race pace is already going to be pretty brutal. Doing a second one should be hell. Any more than that, just why? You're going to be wrecked for the rest of the week. This is the kind of workout that breaks you down rather than build you up.
I think the session is a bit crazy, but if you are a fast-twitch guy the first one isn't going to be hard.
I ran 1:57.5 and 4:20. Running a single 800m in 2:10 is going to be pretty comfortable. The second one is going to be pretty much OK. The third, I suspect, very hard. I'd say I'd have to go 68 and flat out kick.
I'm wishing I could go back about 40 years in time to try it just out of curiosity. I can't see it being a useful training session though.May as well do a 1200m time trial.
Anecdotally, as a mile workout I once gave 3x800 with 4 minutes rest a shot. The first two I completed (of course you can do do a mile at your mile pace with a break in the middle of it) but the third one was about 15 seconds slower. I think you have to be an absolute killer to do 3 at pace and there's probably not much benefit. Mile pace is extremely difficult and physically traumatic.
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