CoachB, it was/is a pleasure reading your posts and following the progress of your athletes. Reminds me of the old days of LRC when coaches such as Joe Rubio would post regularly.
I’m “the athlete in question” and don’t know if y’all will see this but just wanted to thank everyone who has been supporting this blog and giving encouragement, it’s meant a lot to me to see all your input this season, Nike nationals was disappointing but I’m so satisfied with the season and can’t wait for the next steps in my career. Thanks again for all the support!!
Hi Joe
Last update on this thread.
NON was disappointing. If I had to go back and do a few things differently, I'd have started with not going to Iceland. (This was not a possibility, my wife is Icelandic and we booked the trip to see relatives back in 2020, but that was canceled. This was the first chance we had to go since then and I want to stay married). I feel like if I was around the last 2 weeks, I'd have been able to help modulate the workouts to how things were progressing. As it stood instead, Joe was very good at doing the sessions that I emailed. He might have been a little too good....going a bit deep in the well to hit times that were kind of ideal.
That being said, the 3 week plan between state and NON might have simply been too aggressive. I thought for sure Joe would smash his PR at NON, but it didn't happen.
Monday 6/12 - 2 mile WU + drills + 3 x 50 + 3 x 1k with full recovery (6 min) 3:12, 3:08, 3:00
Tue: 3 mile warm up, drills, 3 x 50 acceleration + 2 x 150 accelerating every 50
Wed: 2 mile WU + drills + 4 x 300 with 2:30 rest (45, 46,46,46) + 4 x 200 with 2:30 rest (26.5, 27.5, 26.5, 25.5)
Thu: Travel day, 10 minute shake out on arrival
Fri: 3 miles easy on Pre's trail + 4 x 30 second stride outs.
Sat: NON 800 1:54.69
In hind sight, there are a few things I likely would have done differently. I titled the thread "elite 800m training" because I truly believed Joe was going to be top 10 in the US by this point in the season. As it turns out, he PR'ed by 2.2 seconds in the 400 but only 0.5 seconds in the 800. In the end, he DID end up in the top 10 in the US on the list of 400/800 combo guys. Maybe I should go back and change the title of the thread ;)
If I had the season do do over again, almost everything would be the same, but I would have liked to have him race less and be able to do some more VO2 max type sessions. My original plan had him running more VO2 max type sessions as fartlek runs, but I think I got a little over cautious and ended up emphasizing the less stressful CV intevals and Tempo intervals a lot more.
To be sure, Joe was probably the most aerobically strong 400/800 guy in the country, but just being aerobically strong isn't enough.
What was his 400 PR? I don't recall you mentioning that.
Yeah, thanks, I just had a text conversation with him about an hour ago. He's really pleased with the result and feels like he made some tactical mistakes that cost him a faster time. He was surprised by how hard it is to move up the field on an indoor track and thinks he should have gone out harder
We've been talking a lot about his training.
While in high school, he did lots of low end aerobic, threshold development type stuff and lots of high end sprint type stuff and we tried to let his races take care of the VO2 max paces and lactate tolerance parts of fitness. At BYU, he's doing VO2 max type fartlek stuff (about 5k pace, or slightly faster) on a weekly basis. He's doing hill repeats once a week, which wasn't really an option in high school, but he really likes them.