What is the bare minimum 200 speed to break 2:00 in the 800?

Thank you for the suggestions, I will try a few of these. Does anyone else have any other suggestions or feedback. I appreciate the posts!

Get a good warm up before you race. The faster the race, the more of a warm up you need.

You may also try 2x(600-300) with 3',6-7' between sets, with 600 just slightly slower than goal pace and 300 slightly faster. This is an extremely hard workout, if you are not well prepared aerobically you will die doing this. Another good one for lactate tolerance is 600-400-200 at race pace+1.5sec x 400, race pace or slightly faster, faster than race pace, with 3' minutes of recovery. You may recover 8-10 minutes after and repeat the set. If you can manage to run for example 1:33, 59, 28 twice for sure you will break 2. Another good one is 2x(500-300-100) with 4',2',7' between sets at a pace slightly faster than race pace. I suggest you to do this workouts no more than once or twice per season and to keep them at least ten days away from race day, they are very taxing and you'll need to recover

How do you get his speed endurance on check because wow I only see speed endurance. I run 26s 200m in training and yet I'm still on 2.10 in the 800m.

My PR is 2:00. I ran 4:27 for the mile. I think I ran a 52 open 400m. I remember running 12 x 200s in 26. Just posting this because I’m still pissed I never broke two minutes in the open 800. Still mad over a decade later.

Plenty of people have speed. Not many have endurance. You probably need both aerobic endurance(mileage, tempos, vo2max work) and speed endurance ( those 300-500 at race pace).

400 to 200 ratio of 2.2 is pretty typical
800 to 400 ratio of 2.2 is doable but takes great fitness

800 to 200 ratio of 4.84 will give you a pretty good ballpark of speed needed

2:20 / 4.84 = 28.93

2:10 / 4.84 = 26.86

2:00 / 4.84 = 24.79

1:50 / 4.84 = 22.72

1:40 / 4.84 = 20.66

Brushing up on some data scraping skills... Pulled something that I thought might be of decent relevance here.

Scatter plot of 400m and 800m PRs from the 2022 Women's NCAA 800m leaderboard. Should give a solid idea of what kind of 400m time you need for low 2's.

Image:i.imgur.com/vpgrUyJ.png

And not that it will help you find out anything about 2:00, but here's the same thing on the men's side.

Image:i.imgur.com/ISeT9wO.png

old thread, but here are 3 people I know, with times slightly rounded:

1. 56, 2:02, 4:27, ~25:00 8k
2. 52, 1:53, 4:03, 8:00, ~24:30 8k
3. 54, 1:59, 4:35

Even the more distance-focused athletes (#2 and #1, #1 especially) need ~54-high / 55 low 400 speed to break 2. I did a workout with #2 and he did 6x200 at 27 off 2:00 rest which means he could run 52 (also did a 300 in 39 at the end of a workout)

i think about 26. i use what i call doppleganger theory. find someone in HS or college running the actual time you want and work your way backwards. there are plenty of actual 800 guys with online times of 2 flat. 2 flat 800 is a high 50s split maybe about 58. i found some 58 400 runners doing about 25-26 200.

that being said i agree with the posters saying 800 is a unique animal where it helps to be either fast or someone who can just hit a split over and over endurance wise. to me that 58 may be misleading because if you are straining to run 58 and blow up lap 2 you aren't running under 2. vs. if you run low 50 then all you need is mediocre endurance to break 2. it's a mix of skill sets.

56 is too slow. I knew a plenty of people with that 400 speed who didn't come even close to breaking 2.