Critique my training plan for base 800-3200m

Might be a bit heavy. Tempo + sprints + long run = 3 hard days per week, no need for that during base imho. Also, your long run is only somewhat longer than your easy runs.

How about modifying your plan, maybe something like:

Mon/Tue/Thu/Fri easy run 45 min, building up to 60 min. Or, better yet, do 30 min am and 30 min pm, and build then both up to 45 min easy. KEEP IT EASY though

Wed: Tempo -OR- Sprints (alternate weeks) Rather than 5 x 50m, try 6 x (30m smooth accel + 30m full sprint + 30m easy coast decel) with 5 minutes rest. Do a good warm up with light drills, strides, and accelerations first!

Sat: 90 min long run. Start with slower than easy pace for the long run. Over time, pick up the pace for the last 5, then 10, then 15 minutes.

Sun: off

Just some ideas. Have fun, good luck!

I would look up if more accomplished runners do pickups after their runs during base phase, & how often. Very underrated aspect.

Good advice I will definitely take into consideration. But one thing is the sprints wouldn’t be a “hard day” since after words I’m not really sore or any thing, plus they only last maybe 6-7 seconds

I don’t see any problem with this generally, though I would probably do a heavier sprint day & then a shorter day Friday. Like 10-12 10 second hill sprints and/or heavier track sprinting with plyometrics. Cool down.

I would also add a hard lifting day, probably on the tempo run day. I wouldn’t do more than 6 easy on Friday. Find other days where you can add mileage, like on the sprinting day or a couple doubles or lengthen the long run a bit.

Lack of soreness does not mean it was not a hard day. Talk to your coach. Assuming they know anything, they can educate you about what a hard day is. Important to know!

Also, if you have been a distance guy lacking speed, and you do that sprint workout properly, then yes you will be sore.

Add doubles + cruise intervals. You’re not training for a long XC race - your longest race should be shorter than 10 minutes.

In one week I’d do tempo + 200s at 800 + long run, and in another week I’d do 400s at ~8k pace, 300s at mile pace, and then a broken tempo.

Seems good. What is your background?

I would do the sprints up hill. Be sure to take full recovery (several minutes) between each rep.

I would add some kind of fartleck, maybe alternate with the tempo or put the tempo inside the long run if that's not too much for you and then easy fartlek every tuesday.

That's not really basework then, is it? More like early season or preseason?

Exactly. Although I don’t think breaking down the tempo into threshold repeats would be too bad depending on the athlete

Agreed. I didn't want to get overly complex in my basic suggestion above, but yes, that makes sense to me. As a generalized approach, I might suggest starting out with a 5K TT (or using recent XC times) to establish proper current paces for tempo/cruise workouts. Then, on the non-sprint Wed sessions in my suggestion above, I would alternate a 20 min steady tempo with 5 x 1000m with 200m jog, or, say 6 x 800m with 200m jog for more of a beginner-intermediate runner. If more advanced, 6-8 x 1000m.

Not an expert. imho, this base approach would work best over a longer period; say, 6-8 months. But 4 mos would be ok for a youngster I think.

If doing it over 6-8 mos, then I'd divide it in half. For the first half of base training, for the sprint session I'd suggest 5 x 80m hill accel.

I’d train basically the same until peaking - but my coach had me increase the reps before going faster and back down. I believe that Jakob repeats the same training for most of the year as well.

His favorite XC workout was 7x1000 at cv, but we’d start from 6x800, 5x1000, 6x1000, and then 7x1000 before going back to 6x800 but maybe 3 seconds faster per rep. It builds fitness and you can see yourself progressing.

Great advice so far!!! Keep it coming

M: 10 mile progression run (easy- moderate)

T: 3 miles easy AM / 6 miles easy + 6 x 100m strides PM

W: 8-10 x 1k @ threshold w/ minute rest

T: 8 miles easy

F: 3 miles easy AM / 5 miles easy + 10 x 10 second hill sprints

S: 8 miles true fartlek

50 miles of aerobic volume/strength but also short speed for the 800m.

Great plan, but I have school so I’m not able to double up

If you need some guidance I’m happy to spend the time to talk more and gather some more information before writing you a more specialised plan.

Drop me an email at henry@runlinecoaching.com and we can figure something out.

Ok looks like you have a good base but my question would be what time of the year is this?

We are in the first part of our season here in Australia but here is what a little bit of what their season looks like as we have Nat's for juniors in April and Open athletes at the end of March

Here is a sample week:

Monday easy running 30-50 minutes depending on athlete

Tuesday 2x200m threshold + 2x6x400 on 1:45 cycle 2 min between sets + 800m threshold at end of session (We do 1 track session per week from October until Nationals in March/April)

Wednesday 30-70minutes depending on athlete

Thursday 4-6x4min efforts with 2 min float recovery ie this is 3:25k pace recovery 2 min at 4 min k pace 24-36 minutes total running time. (done on grass circuit)

Friday OFF

Saturday 10-12k surging hills or 5x2x150m hill or 5-6x1k efforts

Sunday 45-90 minutes depending on athlete.

Just another way of doing things. Good luck to you!

Overall pretty good, those hour+ base runs are going to do a lot for you. A lot of people sleep on that aspect of training for track.

For your speed session, I’d structure it more like 50-50-50-150-150-150, all with running starts and all of the rest you could ever want. Then the next week do 200s, 2 sets of 4 where you start at mile pace and work down to 800m or slightly faster pace. 2 minutes between reps and as much as you want between the sets. For someone looking for 2:00 in the 800m, 33-31.x-30.x-29.x. This helps you learn pace very well, and will help with middle distance specific speed endurance.

For your tempo session, keep it as is for one week, that looks great, and then the next you can do something like 8x3 minutes at 5:30ish pace, with 2 minutes of jogging recovery. This will help prepare you for the structure of hard vo2 workouts later in the season when you peak, and is a great tempo stimulus that will keep things interesting.

Good luck!