anyone else burn out as soon as they start speedwork?

I can’t speak to why, but a guy on my college XC team was like this—like, just 1 or 2 weeks with a truly hard VO2 max workout and he was cooked. Our coach started letting him run a steady/hard 10 instead of our Monday interval workout towards the end of the season (including during the taper—which, that would’ve left me cooked, but he thrived off it) and he started peaking better.

I can’t guarantee that’ll work for you, but you might want to give something like it a shot.

Slow down and run more relaxed. Don't race each interval or your teammates.

Yes, I was like you. PR's came off of a good base phase, then a few weeks of targeted speedwork. I'd barely improve as track season ground on.

I will say this--the average American HS track runner is so over-raced that it is hard to tell what the actual issue is. I just did so many hard laps around the oval from races and practice that I never got my legs under me from April to May.

I'd imagine runners like you and me would feel different if we only had a total of six or seven races in a season, and only one or two speed efforts per week. I'd bet things would be different. Instead, I was running multiple races every week in meets and having at least one hard speed day, usually more, on top of that at practice.

I.e. what do you mean with speed work ?

Please give some example workouts ?

If you only run Tempo and Steady (half and marathon pace) and no mile-3k pace Workout, then going straight into big 5k workouts for sure will crash you.

Same as never lifting weights and suddenly doing 15 sets of 10 reps heavy bench. You will be sore for weeks....

You probably need some speed work in your base phase.

Short hills 10x45 sec or 10x100m Strides at 0.8m pace after an easy run of 45 min

Do your speed work after a few miles progression run, start the run at a slow pace and build the pace comfortably, finishing fast.

Or you can do 2 x shorter runs before your fast session.

You will probably do better quality workouts and keep your endurance level high too.

Ignore those who say you have to do speed work on "fresh legs".

Even Usain Bolt didn't train or race this way. He would warm up for 2 hours before every race.

Yes, I was like that in high school. It came down not knowing any better (was mid-'80s, good training knowledge was less widespread) and doing those intervals too hard. I could do them without any drop off in pace, so it seemed OK by that measure, but I ran them too hard and left my races in the workouts. It would take me a couple weeks to recover, so was cooked soon after the seasons started and never ran to my potential in my two years of high school running (started late). Like Not An Expert's teammate, my coach ended up sending me out for a 10 miler by myself on interval days.

...... You are not strong enough. Get stronger ..... Drills, pushups, sit ups, etc

Make sure you run your in between days super, super easy. Switching out one of your speed work sessions to a tempo may also help.

Distance Training isn't particularly exciting. One must be consistent. Start speed work 8-10 weeks before your peak race.

4% sprint speed development

8% speed work(race paces, racing)

10% tempo pace

80% mileage

Same here, after 3-4 weeks of V02 work I peak hard and then my performance falls dramatically, only recovering slightly towards the end of the season. I'm not particularly quick but my 800/1500 times generally seem to be stronger than my 5k/8k times, so I don't think it's just a slow/fast twitch issue.

Got to keep the base work and distance runs through out the season. We may add speed but the tempos/long runs/fartleks are still part of the routine. I think what happens is mileage goes down because of the weekly racing.

I’ve had some runners respond like this when I was coaching (high school) and it was sometimes hard to get the energy back into their legs. My advice is to “cruise” all the hard sessions for a few weeks and see if that helps (by cruise I mean finish each feeling in control as if you could have kept going a considerable further distance/stay behind runners you can beat in races). This is usually a better solution than just running solo workouts (because you still get to enjoy the workouts with your teammates). Your races should provide enough top speed and effort sessions for improvement throughout the rest of the season….

Racing is speed work. Some people don't need a ton of speed work to benefit from it, aka they're high responders. You may be a high responder to speed work, so you may be better off doing mileage and threshold and just using the racing as your speed work. Maybe try that out and see what happens.

Run slower on easy days dummy