How do I make that big 800 meter leap?

What's your 400?

You don't need that much upper body strength, it certainly doesn't need to be emphasized. Pull ups, pushups, maybe some DB press, and whatever you get from squatting, cleaning, snatching, etc., will be sufficient for upper body.

Yes to doing fast stuff often. Move your feet fast every day, or almost every day. This doesn't mean run 150s @ 400 race pace every day. It means that before you do a tempo, you do some drills and a few accelerations to top speed. And don't just "go through the motions" with your drills. DO them. Feel snappy and light and fast. Once a week or so, you should do very short sprints, e.g. 4x60m w/ full recovery. Do strides after easy runs. All this stuff. If you wanna run fast, you gotta live fast.

Coming from a cross country/distance background, I've never had the opportunity run an official 400 but ran 53 high once or twice in a 4x400 in high school at the end of the meet. I suspect that I probably have faster top speed now, but feel that training as a 400 runner gives you a huge edge up when moving to the 800. Noted on doing fast stuff super frequently and consistency, that makes a whole lot of sense since sprinters are constantly doing leg turnover and acceleration stuff, even on easy days. Gotta live fast

update: just ran 2:00.03 on a 200 meter indoor track. onto outdoors with my eyes on 1:58-7

Awesome news. You’ve got this, keep it up!!

Hey, huge leap guy here,

I only ran 2:08 under my highschool coaches, got down to 2:03 as a senior covid year and 1:57 w/ 60/57 splits in a TT to walk on to my college team, and ended up running 1:49 w/ that program, hoping to improve on that before I die.

Here’s my 400m/800m progression, and my rough avg mileage Jr year of HS to Jr year of College:

57.1, 15-20 mpw, 2:08

53.0, 40-45 mpw, 2:03

51.6, 65 mpw, 1:55

50.9, 70-75 mpw, 1:53

49.7, 45-50 mpw, 1:49

Lessons to learn from this data…

- 400m time has a very very very direct correlation with your 800m, in my case a stronger correlation than mile/1500m time. My best performances in the 1500-3k by a long shot were during my soph season, but I put on muscle and trained more as a 4/8 guy who did long runs for fun which is what got me my best results there.

-Higher mileage has very diminishing returns in the 800m, for most people I don’t think there’s a point in going more than 50 mpw, 30-35 is the sweet spot for most.

In my opinion, your endurance and mileage should be a complete non-factor until you get near your maximum potential in the 200/400m. To break 2:00 you need to be in minimum 25.5-54.0 shape, and to break 1:50 you need to be in 23.low-50.0 shape. All the tempo runs and 400m repeats in the world will not get you your desired results if you don’t have the wheels.

Look at pro 800m runners and what their physiques look like, large upper legs and glutes, with moderate back and shoulder development. If your physique doesn’t look like this work on it. You need a very strong lower body and a light but strong upper body.

I’ve also learned you can show up to an 800m race in PR 200m shape and PR 5k shape and still absolutely crap the bed. You need to be doing very specific 800m work or your legs will get flushed with lactic 400-500m into your race and you’ll be kicking at 5:00 per mile pace.

Great work! Please keep us updated.

Go to Grand Canyon and use a 797 meter pole.

Congrats buddy.

Keep going. You’ll go 1.57.

Love this advice. Currently older but trying to get back into 800 training and have found true speed development day very helpful. Personally got too focused on distance running and have found the speed and explosiveness hard to get back into but things like regular drills, strides, and hills can build towards doing really fast stuff safely. Felt called out about actually doing drills and not just going through motions because I'm guilty of that but think that's great advice. Joe Rubio said "800 pace should be like taking a dump, done regular and often" so touch on it someway often.

MoVB

This is excellent 800m running advice. The only other thing I'll add is that dedicated some time each week to plyometrics (Jim Radcliffe has an excellent book on the subject) is guaranteed to have a noticeable impact. It takes power as well as speed to go around the track at >15 mph, and plyos are an excellent way to build that.

You need to be able to do a couple of 23s for repeats, at least