HS 800m Base Training

Move that fartlek to once a week (probably go 8k pace for the on portions).

My advice would be:

-Alternate those shorter hills with some longer hills every other week, maybe 90"-2'

-30m Flys are generally a waste of time IMO. I've settled on 60-80m hill sprints weekly for my crew, and also will incorporate some 100m hill strides into some workouts here and there.

-If your goal is truly 800m and nothing above, a long run isn't totally necessary depending on the athlete.

-Don't be afraid to have a lot more density of "quality" early on. Nothing crazy, but 800m runners need to run fast, often. That can mean diagonals, daily strides, hill sprints, shorter steady runs instead of long slow miles, etc.

I run a Canova inspired program and since incorporating that we've been top 3 in our state for the last decade and yearly trips to NBIN/NBON for the 4x800 and similar relays. Times in the 7:40s for 4x800 and one year had three different squads (12 different runners) run between 7:45 and 8:10. When I say Canova, I mean training is inspired by his principles, but also focus on the individual athlete instead of just throwing everyone into one plan. Requires more effort, but results have been better for it.

Happy to discuss more.

Thanks for the post.

Could you elaborate on:

"Canova inspired training," especially as it applies to mid-d and 800 in particular. What does that mean in your program and how have you translated his principles to significantly shorter race distances than he is usually known for?

Talk a little more about "density of quality, especially early on." This can be a challenge at the HS level, especially in terms of an 800 focus vs. an 800/1600 focus. How do you achieve this without too much too fast too early in the season?

Thanks!

Yes, sorry for the long wait.
I'm inspired by the writings and philosophy of Canova, although yes, his greatest successes are in 5k/10k and Marathon. He has inspired other coaches who've had great success coaching 800m (Ghidini, for example). So I say Canova, in the sense of catering to the individual athlete needs vs a standard system for all, but also incorporate things from Paul Erang at UTEP, Johnny Gray, Kimwetich, Fiscianaro, Juantorena, Rudisha, and other athletes that are focused on purely "long sprinters" and nothing over 800m.
So, first step is being able to identify athlete types, resistant vs fast. The former being our cross country stars, those able to run well in 3200/1600 in track as their main focus and 4x800 as secondary. The latter being our soccer players, sometimes even football players (rarely), or cross country runners who weren't our best. One of our soccer players once finished a speed workout on the track on the backstretch, saw his friend at the high jump pit and immediately ran over and cleared a 5'10" bar. I thought, oh, this guy is just a natural athlete with speed and fast fibers. There was no way our cross country guys could do anything even close to that fully rested.
On a macro level, the FAST group we want to move from being able to run, for example, 3x300 in 41 with 10' of rest, to 6x300 in 43 with 5' of rest. That is progression for them since they already have the speed necessary for a much faster 800. The RESISTANT group, if they can run 8x400 in 63 with 2', our goal might be to move to 4x400 in 56 with 5'. The endurance is there, but want to work on the speed but since they naturally are built with the ability to recover much faster, we must approach progression in a different way.
When talking about density of training, I used to be afraid of using speed too early for fear of "burnout" "early peaking" or whatever you want to call it. So back in the day, we did lots of slow running, some tempo runs, some hill sprints here and there, long runs, and some fartleks in the winter. We would always go run an indoor meet in January and one in February (our outdoor season started on March 1 and ended early June). The old way, almost like clockwork each year in January the 4x8 would run 8:30 or so, then 8:20 in February (individuals running somewhere between 2:03-2:08, 4:40s, 10:15 etc.). Then by our first big meet in April, 8:10-8:15, then at our district and regional meet usually running 8:00-8:10, placing somewhere between 5-9 (top 4 move on to state championships).
The new way, we started doing more racing indoors of course because the athletes enjoyed it, but we started running 7:55-8:05 indoors and qualifying to NBIN (I was scared at first, thinking our season would end poorly in June), but was pleasantly surprised to see then in April running 7:50s, regionals 7:40s and continuing through state, placing very highly and then running well again at NBON. The culture also changed for the group, as the 4x800 saw more success, recognition, travel opportunities, etc, the more the kids wanted to be on that team. We had more consistency in the winter, friendly competition, and more focus.
The training changes were almost no long runs for the FAST group, a day off per week, and instead of slower recovery days, more running by feel, and we used a lot more intermittent training sessions. The resistant group also did more quality in the winter than prior, but it was more focused on their development for 1600/3200, since the 4x800 was more of a bonus for them rather than the main goal. I will discuss more about training below.
Don't be afraid to run fast year round. I'm not talking only about hill sprints, as we used to do those weekly. We still do them, sometimes up to 3x per week (60-80m, full rest). Work backwards from the end of your season in terms of racing and training. If I want an athlete to run 1:52 in May, he's going to need at least 7-10 (in my opinion) good races before that before these types of athletes reach their best (Talking about races of 400,600,800m in length). So racing early and often in the winter was helpful. In the same way with training, if we want that athlete to be able to complete workouts of 6x150 in 18 or 10x200 in 27 or 6x300 in 41 at the end of the season, we need to start in January with 6x100 in 12-13, 6x200 in 29,28,27, or 4x300 in 44. Low volume, more rest, same % of speed. We have to build in elements of highly specific training more so for these guys than the resistant early on in the fundamental period.
The long runs made the fast guys tired and feel slow. I had to let go of the dream of these guys being athletes that could run 1:55 and 4:15, and shift the goal to a 1:55 and 51 second 400, and by this we found when they could improve to 49 on the 4x400, their 800 came down a lot, vs trying to get their 800 down by way of improving their 1600 ability. So generally we capped their longest runs at around 50 minutes, and a lot of times less than that. They had days that had equal or more volume, but a lot more quality. A weekly run around 45-50% of their mile pace (or 55-60% of what you might call their proposed vV02) steadily for 20-25' was also beneficial and helped develop their aerobic system better than slower running.
Threshold: There are a thousand ways to stimulate the threshold beyond only working at 4mmol. For this group we dropped our traditional 5 mile progression runs and 4x1600 w/ 1' rest threshold sessions for more fartleks (1-3' range) by effort, with more like 3:2 work to rest ratio. If you take 2 different athletes, one resistant able to run 2:00 (but 1600 in 4:30) and one fast (but 1600 in 4:50) the resistant athlete is going to feel good at threshold running around 5:20 pace, the fast athlete will naturally run closer to 5:45, but will feel better afterward, and ready to bounce back the next day. Another way we did threshold training was to replace those traditional workouts with something like 3 sets of 8x120m on the track. A 2:00 athlete would run these in about 19-20 seconds, (90-93% of their 800 pace) and would have 30 seconds of shuffle to get to the next start line, and then would take 4' rest between the sets. This is actually a threshold workout for them as their lactate level would tend to be MUCH lower than after something like a mile at 5:30 or a 5k tempo run. In this way, they can run much closer to the pace of the race and with good form. The guys LOVED when they could do this vs moaning and groaning when hearing about longer reps. Also, we could do this the day before or after a harder workout without any hangover or bad feeling. Other types of intermittent training would include things like a warmup followed by 10 x 100m at 13.5 for example, and then drills, a circuit, and maybe something like a mile of stride the straights and jog the curves. We also used in a similar theory, things like 20x200 in 38 seconds with 100m walk instead of going out for a recovery run of 6 miles at 7:45 pace that would just make them tired. Don't get me wrong, there was definitely easy running, but it was much less often.
Going off that, it took me way too long to also figure out that the day before races needed to be different for these athletes. Even having our fast athletes do the traditional 5k loop easy and some strides didn't yield their best results. I moved to doing a shorter warmup and some highly specific running reps with full rest, and ultimately late in the season, I'm not kidding, doing our mobility warmup which was 2 laps around the track and drills, then running our 3-4' and back, then something like 100,150,200 very fast, and being done. They would then run off the charts the next day.
I've gone on too long, and I can't keep track of what I've discussed and what I've left out, but I'm happy to discuss more or answer other questions if people have them.

Apologies for the giant block of text. I tried to spaces things out but it just defaulted this this.

Fantastic post. Almost didn't read it after you wrote 30m flys are waste of time (agree to disagree there), but I thought your next post was filled with great information and thoughts on training and coaching, and is obviously working for you guys. Thank you!

Great info GoodHSCoach!

I am also base training for 800m right now (will probably be around 2:00-2:05). What do you think of this schedule?

Monday - 20x100m strides, 100m rest

Tuesday - Easy + 4x100m strides

Wednesday - 1k's @ 10k pace + a couple 200's after @ 800m/1500m pace

Thursday - Easy + 4x100m strides

Friday - Easy + 4x100m strides

Saturday - 30-40 minute progressive tempo, starting @ marathon pace, progressing to 1 hour race pace

Sunday - short shakeout

Total - 70-75 miles per week

Once racing starts in January, I will do more specific workouts and cut mileage a bit. Thoughts?

Thank you for reading it, and glad you enjoyed. There's no right way to do things, but happy to share my experiences. I enjoy learning and trying new things to see what works for us.

Most of the examples I gave of actual training workouts and stuff is just that, an example, and not what we really do in most cases. Enjoyed writing and happy to continue the discussion with anyone that wants to join in.

It's a base that will set you up well for the season. Impossible to say whether its ideal for you not knowing you as an athlete and what your goals are. For someone focused more on 1500 this looks good.

I'd be inclined to have wednesday be more focused on fartlek/effort (internal load) than a specific pace, especially at this time of year. I would do hill sprints on friday, 60-100m, and honestly that Saturday tempo is a great workout, but it's a tough one. I'd slow it down to make sure you could nail it every week in and week out, but again, I don't know you well enough to say for sure. Monday could also be more like 4 sets of 5x100 at 800 pace or 2 x 10 at 1500 pace. Both would be a good starting point to progress from.

And don't forget this time of year is for general fitness. We would throw in circuits (hill and flat), runs with variations of 30-45" every 3-4', fundamental tempo runs, and exercises for strength endurance and technical drills.

I’m with the posters on the 30m flys. Those are great winter work if you’re a 100m guy hoping to shave 0.1 seconds off of their time with better acceleration and technique but it’s not the type of work you need as an 800/1600 4x4 kind of guy.

I’d vary week to week with hill sprints of 50-100m, and track strides of 100-200m. Even workouts like 8x200m with full rest work great. Just make sure you are taking plenty of rest or you’ll turn it into a meaninglessly hard workout.

Correct me if I’m wrong but it is my understanding that by improving max velocity through work such as 30m flys, you can improve the anaerobic speed reserve which means an increase in maximum aerobic speed. Shouldn’t these be implemented into training in some way or is it not very beneficial?

Could very well be true. We tried incorporating sometime around 2016-2017, didn't find that they worked into what we were trying to do. Having said that, they have a place for some of our guys that come from the 200/400 background that want to try to transition into the 800. When it comes to sprint development, I believe in the short to long approach.

Hey A good HS coach,

I was wondering what you think about my plan I have come up with for the off season, I wont be racing indoor track. I would say I am in what you would call the "resistant group" because I am an 800, 1500/1600 runner, my current plan for the off season is a mix of speed work and lift/gym days and longer (8 ish mile) LSD (6;50 ish for me) paced run days with a long run on Saturday and a hill/stair day thrown in there.

Monday- AM Swim, PM Longer Track Workout (800's or 1ks) w/ strides, Lift

Tuesday - AM Shakeout, PM Longer LSD run w/ strides, plyos

Wednesday - AM Swim, Easy Shakeout PM Speed Work at Track (100's 200's 300's fast), Lift

Thursday - AM Swim, PM Tempo (30-40 minutes at 6:15 or slightly faster)

Friday - AM Swim, Shakeout PM Longer Hills/Stairs, Lift

Saturday - AM Long Run PM short fast strides at track

Sunday Rest

I want to keep up my milage and want to get faster and stronger. Is this a good approach to this? What type of speed workouts should I use on my shorter faster track days? I have a base from XC.

A good HS coach...

Interesting ideas. Would you be willing to share a general January vs. April week? I have an athlete that very much fits into your 'fast' category, would like your insight into how your pieces fit together in a week's format.

Happy to share.
First, a note about schedule, weather and racing.

In our state, our championship schedule begins in mid May and ends early June, to give some context. The head coach has full faith in me, so I get to do what I want with our distance guys, but I do have to run them at the weekend invites every week; no taking weeks off, which is no problem. I’m happy to not have to run them in the mid week dual meets, which gives our younger and less experienced guys a chance to perform. I do have pressure to score a lot of points from the distance crew at our conference championship. It’s usually not super close and because of our depth I tend to run the best guys in only one event, some will double back in the 4x4.

The weather here is often unpredictable. We’ve had hot days in March and blizzards in April. We’ve had canceled meets due to freezing temps and also excessive rain. We can usually count on one big invite having great weather and then running in really hot temps in the championship meets.

Due to the above, I’ve learned to not put any stock into mid season times for an indicator of where they are. Our group focuses on how we perform vs our competitors. We have 2 invites per season where we face off against some of the best in our state, in mid to late April, and then after those, our next goal is to perform at the regional championship (our conference is usually fairly weak, as is our pre regional meet). For those that run at the indoor championship meets, we train right through all the meets until we get to the late April invite and we will back down a bit to see what they can do.

Now, after all of that nonsense...keep in mind this is for the fast athletes, generally our soccer players aka long sprinters. Keep in mind they've been building up to this stuff since November.

Early January, no race

Monday: 3k easy + 3k of 20" stride 1'40" easy + 3x120m, 6x80m hill sprints + 3k steady back to the school // Mobility Drills, and some will lift if they want

Tuesday: Easy run 8k

Wednesday: 4 x (2' + 1')strong effort, 1' and 2' rest - on the track, 2x200 as fast as they feel like going with full rest. If the weather is great we may just be on the track the whole time and do something like 3x(600,400,200) around 80>90% of their 800 pace.

Thursday: Easy run 8k + lift

Friday: 2k easy + 3k steady + 15-20' of diagonals on the field or 2 sets of 8-10x100 at about 90% of their 800 pace.

Saturday: Indoor Track: 6 x 300m around 95 > 100% with 3-4' rest + lift if they want to.

Sunday: Rest, or jog if they want to

Late January, race week

Monday: 2k easy + 3k steady + 15-20' of diagonals on the field or 2 sets of 8-10x100 at about 90% of their 800 pace // Mobility Drills, and some will lift if they want
Tuesday: Indoor Track: 3 x (100,200,300) + 1x300 or 400 cutdown very fast in spikes
Wednesday: Easy run 8k
Thursday: 3k easy + 3k of 20" stride 1'40" easy + 8x60m hill sprints + 3k steady back to the school
Friday: 4k easy + 1k steady + 6 x 100m at their own personal speed
Saturday: Indoor race. 800m race and 4x4 relay typically. Sometimes a 600. Never more than 2 races.
Sunday: Rest, or jog if they want to

Early April, race week

Monday: 2k easy, 6k steady + 6-8x100m strides at their personal speed of choice
Tuesday: 2x1000, 2x600 cutdowns + 1600m of in/out 200s
Wednesday: Easy run 8-10k
Thursday: 3k easy + 3k of 20" stride 1'40" easy + 8x60m hill sprints + 3k steady
Friday: Around 1pm: Short jog, warmup drills, 2x100, 1x200 // Evening: Night invite, race 2 races, typically a 1600 and 400.
Saturday: 8 miles or so, with 2 easy, 2 tempo, 1 easy, 2 miles or 1' on/off, and 1 easy
Sunday: Rest, or jog if they want to

Late April, race week (coming off Saturday invite)

Monday: Warmup + 3 x (8x150) about 90% of 800 pace with 50m jog and 4' set rest / lift
Tuesday: Easy run, 8k, mobility drills, a few strides
Wednesday: 2x200 + 600 cutdown + 2 x (400,200) (200s are about mile pace, 600 cuts down every 200...for example 34,32,28)...the last part is 400 at mile pace, 200 steady, 200 800 pace or faster followed by 200 jog and 200 walk)
Thursday: Easy run, 8k with 30-40" pickup every 4'
Friday: 4k easy + 1k steady + 6 x 100m at their own personal speed
Saturday: Relay Meet: Racing any combination of events
Sunday: Rest, or jog if they want to

Will come back to post more about early period and late period later.

Going to next talk about the phases of training we use. This obviously excludes the runners who start running in February or March when track officially begins, as you can really only do so much with 12 weeks of training.

For everyone else:

General/Introduction: After cross country. Generally this is the month of November, or mid Nov - Mid December. We use a medium overall volume, focusing on lower intensity endurance and fast, alactic running (hill sprints mostly), as well as developing the general athletic abilities needed to actually train well in the following periods. Most of the weeks actually end up looking the same in terms of structure because the intensity is lower and we know how they'll recover quickly between each day.

We may have a week in November that looks like this:
Mon: Easy, steady, diagonals, lift
Tue: Easy aerobic work: Something like 3 x 12' (4' steady, 4' easy, 4' tempo) or 5' easy, 3' steady, 2' tempo for 50' total.
Wed: Easy run or cross train, lift
Thu: Easy, diagonals or short hill sprints
Fri: Similar to Tuesday
Sat: 3 x Track Circuit mixing short reps and technical exercises for strength + 1 longer rep at the end at personal speed
Sun: Rest

And then at the end of November/Early December a week like this:
Mon: Easy, steady, diagonals, lift
Tue: Fartlek like before
Wed: Easy run or cross train, lift
Thu: Easy run
Fri: 4x600, 4x500, 4x400 (10k pace to 5k pace, very easy)
Sat: 3-5 Hill Circuits, mixing short hill sprints and technical exercises
Sun: Rest

Fundamental: Christmas Break (Mid Dec) through Mid Feb. This is the most important part of the prep, really. Trying to reach the top volume in this time, and holding that throughout most of the season. The exception to that being a small drop off if we go to NBIN to try to run well there, which is followed by a week off or easy, and then immediately back to where they were. For training, we're still going to use a pretty structured layout for the most part, because again, we know how they'll respond and recover 95% of the time; advantage of keeping notes and tracking workouts over the years. However, instead of the General sort of every other day with some "quality", we spread it out more like:

Mon: Easy running, steady running, hill sprints (anywhere from 60-120m)
Tue: Easy running w/ variations every 4'
Wed: Fartlek in the 1-3' range w/ 3:2 rest ratio or if its nice out, reps in the 400-800m range generally.
Thu: Easy running, 8-10k generally
Fri: Steady running OR Diagonals make up the majority of the day
Sat: Workout: Typically a mixture of paces. The further we go, the % of fast work increases.
Sun: Rest

Also, in the fundamental, we're not worried really about progressing our specificity to anything crazy fast. If our 2:00 800m runner is comfortable doing 8x200 in 30" with 2' rest, then our goal through this period is to either extend this to 12-16 reps keeping everything the same, or move to 5x300 in 45 with 3' rest, or staying at 8x200 and trying to decrease the rest by 15 seconds each time. Of course, the 2:00 runner has to run faster than this pace sometimes, but it is generally not the main focus of the workouts we do. But this of course, will vary depending on the athlete.

Intermittent Training
Our goal over time is to make what was major training into minor training. For example, in November we plan a day around steady running, or hill sprints, or something like 8x100m very fast. In the outdoor season, we want to be able to place this training on the days before, after, in between our major training sessions as a complement to the big work.
Never replace, always add!

Also, a lot of examples of workouts here are just really simple examples. 8x200, 6x300, 10x400, etc. Very boring, just using it to make a point.

A major focus of mine when writing workouts is to:

1. Make things interesting and fun. I like to include many different paces, non-traditional distances. Keeping them on their toes and guessing whats next. Many layers within one single workout. Most of what we do is a mixture of things.

2. Preparing athletes to race and not time trial. Unlike college, we don't have to hit time standards. We want to run fast of course, but there's no pressure to do so. High school racing is crazy as almost no one knows how to pace well, there's a lot of surging and settling, etc. Practicing race technique has been good for us.

What I mean by that is manipulating the reps with paces, how rest periods work, and more. I can give more specific examples at another time if anyone is interested.

I would love more examples. I have kids running well at 1600-3200, but have yet to create a solid plan to have "fast" kids run up to what I think their 800 potential is. I realized about 2 years ago having them train like traditional distance runners wasn't working and am slowly working on finding the balance. We had our first sub 2:00 last year, but obviously that is world's away from having 7-8.

Hey that is really good information. I'm dealing with a group of HS kids and one of our issues is that there is just no where to get in a decent distance run close to the school. There's a very small boring 2M loop through an industrial park. I would rather have these kids on the track than trudging around that wasteland.