Elite HS 800m Training Plan

I've seen a few of your posts - you kmow what you're doing. 48.8 and 0.98 for a 10m fly is great speed, and 16:30 (admittedly on a California XC course) is good enough stamina. If he'd be in shape for a sub 15:30 track 5k, he'd have 1:50 in the bag, and he'd honestly be close to a sub 4:10 mile as well.

I'm always interested in your posts. Just curious about your seasons in California. In NY cross country and soccer are in the fall and we can only choose 1. Basketball, wrestling and boys swimming are in the winter along with indoor track and baseball, lacrosse, volleyball and outdoor track run from March through early June.

Well done and some impressive times for this talented young athlete. A few questions: What do you envision a typical week looking like? You stated that his aerobic system is more developed how will you maintain this on 20 miles per week?

From my experience soccer players tend to be fairly robust athletes but there are always concerns with injuries if he is doing both.

Could you give some examples of sessions developing aerobic capacity?

Thanks for sharing.

He won't stay at 20mpw once soccer is done. He'll probably be more in the 30-35 mpw range. During our Christmas Break, he was practicing soccer only 3 times per week, and was doing 20mpw in addition.

He'll likely still do 20 mpw once the soccer season starts back up in full, next week. Only, he'll do that in mostly easy runs before school. He'll be playing 2 games per week. Last year, our entire offense consisted of him making runs up the middle and someone trying to lob it in to him. He said he felt more tired after those games than after any of my workouts, so I don't think we need to do any organized track training until soccer ends. Our team is better this year, so he might not have to do as much up top, but he's still going to get quite a speed endurance workout twice a week. Our last game is 2/9. There are up to 3 rounds of sectional playoff games and up to another 3 rounds of state playoff games after that. So, I could get him back to the track team anywhere between 2/9 and 3/2. We're good enough to win a few playoff games for sure, so probably won't get him until at least mid/late February.

It's in the attached document, but the main sessions I plan to use, at least early on, are:

Fartlek sessions with "on" intervals of 2-3 minutes @ about 95% vVO2 effort (about 3200m race effort)

Tempo interval sessions at about 80% of vVO2. Last year, he was covering in the neighborhood of 1410-1430 m per 5 minute segment, so around 5:40 per mile average. Early in the season we did 7 x 5 minutes with 1 min recovery. He was only running 1300-1350m on each 5 min segment for those. As the season went on, we dropped the number and went a little faster. I never told him to go faster.....as in, I never said, "OK, you've been covering 1350 in 5 min for 7 reps, now we're going to drop to 4 reps and cover 1430m". It was more along the lines of, "We have 2 meets this week, so we're only doing 4 reps in order to maintain aerobic fitness". He just sort of naturally went faster. I think he probably could have run all 35 minutes at 5:40 pace last year, for those workouts, but his meets would have suffered at that point of the season.

big fan of CA track so keep me updated. Gonna take alot to go against Aaron and a few of the guys from CCS this year

Just spoke to him in the phone. He did 10 x 1 min on 1 min off today, averaging 5:07 pace for the "on" and 7:01 pace for the "off". Averaged 5:55 pace for the whole workout. He probably would have struggled with that session last year. So, I'm encouraged.

Also, this might be a bit of a pipe dream, but I tell our sprinters that they should be able to hold their top speed for 30m.....so, I'd be really excited to see a 30m fly in sub 3 seconds. He ran a session of 30m flies about 10 days ago and averaged 3.18, so it might be a stretch. Maybe if we get a really good tailwind one day.....;)

Also, arrogantly, he and I both want him to get the school record at every distance from 200m-1600m, including the 300IH. Our head coach holds the hurdle record, so there's some smack talk around that one already. The 200m record is only 22.77, so that's possible too. The 1600 record is 4:21.5, set by a meth head in 1985, so I'd really like to see that one go down. He already has the 400 and 800. Getting all of those records was not my idea, but I support it, as long as it doesn't detract from the overall goal.

CA Fan.

He beat all the CCS guys last year.

This is what he did the first week back in school.....previous to this week, his last couple of weeks were pretty similar, but more mileage because he wasn't playing soccer games (I suppose if you counted the soccer games as mileage, the totals would be a lot closer)

M. 3 miles easy + 3 x 30m fly. Full recovery. Fastest in 3.05 (timed using freelap) (no soccer practice, California floods.....)

T. Afternoon soccer game (lost 2-0) followed by 3 miles easy

W. 3 miles easy + soccer practice.

Th Soccer Game, Won 4-2

F. 3 miles easy + weights

S. 10 x 1 min on 1 min off. Averaged 5:07 again for the "on" but this time averaged 6:56 on the off

Sun. Rest

Last year at this point, he was just doing soccer and occasionally a weekend run. I'm feeling good that he should be able to come into the season much more aerobically fit than last year. The trick will be to make sure he stays fresh as well. He needs to move his easy runs to the mornings on game day. Running afterward is a physical and mental grind.

Also, I want to clarify that I don't think this training regime is inherently "elite". Rather....this athlete is probably going to be one of the HS elite this season, and I think people will be interested in what he's doing on the chance that they have athletes in similar situations.

Great work!

One of my runners opened up the season 3 weeks ago in 1:50.22 and we are hoping for 1:48/47 next week.

My group have been at altitude for 3 weeks and here is what he is doing this week.

Monday light run with 3xflying 30's

Tuesday 8x1 min with 1 min rest + 6-8x30 seconds w/ 1min rest

Wednesday recovery 8k

Thursday 3k threshold 1k float 3k threshold (24-25 minutes at 1700m altitude)

Friday rest

Saturday easy 40-50 minutes

Sunday short threshold + strides

He will race next Tuesday and Friday. A great 800m coach to follow on social media is Fast8track club. Justin Rinaldi shares a lot of great insight into his squads training for 800m.

Good luck to your athlete

Agree. Fast8track is great plan for mid distance.

Training for the week.

M: 4 miles easy + 4 x 30m fly

T: AM ez 3, PM Soccer Game. Sustained deep quad bruise that kept him out for the rest of the week. He's recovered now though.

Does the Fast8Track plan include how to get EPO out of your system quickly?

1:48.87 for 1st but arrived late due to traffic and only 1/2 of warm up. Races again on Friday. He is strong but we haven't done too much special training. Nat's at the end of March. I think he can run 1:46 high.

What high school national meet is in March?

I believe he lives in Australia.

Also, NBN indoor is march

That is only under the advanced plan...which apparently even Peter Bol didn't qualify for :(

Nike Indoor Nationals March 10-12 at the Nike Armory..place to be

Looks good to me. Keep it up!