I notice my best races are the weeks of strength workouts such as 800m, 500m or 300m repeats at mile effort, rather than 200m repeats at 800m effort. Does this mean i should stick to the strength workouts rather than the speed?
I notice it takes a long time for me to recover from speed workouts as well. I feel like my body is just made for strength and adapts for the necessary speed for the event.
If you have enough of a sample size where you feel best doing that, then stick to it. It also depends on if youre coaching yourself. If you are then do what feels right. Me personally, I'm not like a "strength" runner but I'm definetly not a speed guy, but my fav tune up workout is usually just some combination of 3k pace 400s and 400 pace 200s and I do a big cut in mileage. For me I just always feel really bouncy and fast so long as I do that like 4ish days before my big race. Just do what makes you feel best on race day, theres a lot of people who don't really have a "peaking" workout, they just lower the overall mileage a tad and keep it moving al la NAU and Mike Smith.
That's basically the same thing. If you're really a strength runner you'd be relying on your tempo runs, progression runs, and fartleks where your easy pace is still pretty fast. 200 meter intervals vs 400 -800 meter intervals, they're still pretty short intervals with rest.
I think you are on to something. If you aren't "quick" then you are just only going to get so much out of those really fast burner type workouts.
It's akin to trying to sharpen a dull blade.. some runners are samurai swords and the sharpening has a huge effect, some of us are more blunt instruments and no amount of sharpening will really do much good.
getting better at what you are already good at can only be a good thing.
I really hate people using "strength" in this way. Strength is the measure of voluntary force production. Why have runners misappropriated this term?