Training program for high school athlete for 800 and the mile

Please give us more information about yourself. Are you a high school coach or an outside coach? Tell us about your coaching background. Thanks in advance.

How could anyone look at the posts on this board and think "everyone really knows [their] stuff about running"? You will likely thrash your runner if you take advice from most of the wannabe nut jobs on this site! Why don't you ask the coaches from successful high school or university teams in your area?

If you look in the "good threads, training info, etc." thread there is some good 800/1600 training links in there.

He didn't ask for training advice directly, he asked for resources. And he seems intelligent enough to filter out what is crap and what is written honestly. On to resources. . .

Jack Daniels Running Formula

Train Hard Win Easy: The Kenyan Way - Toby Tanser

Coe and Martin - Better Training for Distance Runners

Peter Coe - Winning Running: Successful 800 and 1500 Training and Racing

Lore of Running - Timothy Noakes

(a great resource, very scientific and in-depth, not a lot in the way of designing a training schedule but it provides alot of physiological background that you may need to understand the training principles of the other books, I would advise reading the opening few chapters before reading the others)

Marathon. You Can Do It! - Jeff Galloway

(this is just a joke, don't ever, ever read this book)

If you go to Amazon.com and search for running training or Track and Field, go will get these titles and many others, I just checked and they have some used ones fairly cheap, for $20-40 you should be able to get a few good books. You will notice 2 'Lore of Running' titles, one is cheap (older version) one is expension (newer edition), the new edition is great if you have the money, the old edition should suffice for your purposes if want to save $15.

Good Luck.

your training will depend mainly on your sprint capacity.

How is your sprinting?I mean 100 - 400.VS slow distance how much miles did you run for that.What are your pr's on longer distances 10 km especially.

Sorry about the misunderstanding. I meant that everyone seems to have a passion about the sport on this board, I realize that it is a board conerning running, however on different forums/boards you'll find less zeal than others.

Yes resources is what I was looking for, thanks for those DarkMeat,.........however I'm open to any suggestions from anyone with advanced knowledge on the subject.........trying to compare and contrast resources vs. anyone with a proven record of working with athletes in those races,......the lab vs. real world type of deal.

I'm a private personal trainer. I have a bachelor's in exc. science. That being said, what your taught in school, (in my experience), obviously conflicts a lot with what actually goes on in the real world. I've worked with a lot of athletes in explosive type events and sports, as well as the rehab setting, (almost finished with my Phys. Therapy Assistant degree). However, I just started a new job with this personal training company,....independant contractor type deal, so I have to bust my butt and differentiate myself to get a client load, which currently means taking pple at odd times, or clients that are sort of "trouble" or working with clients with goals that people at my work are mostly unfamiliar with,...such as this high school runner....... 99% of our clientle are the house wives and businessmen trying to loose fat, and tone, as well as your occasional high school athletes, that are in sports I'm familiar with as far as conditioning goes.

Oh, also wanted to mention that the high school coaches in my area really don't know anything about these events. Which is why this kid is coming to us, haha. Basically the competiton isn't all that great b/c of the lack of knowledge and it's not looked at as a "cool" event in the area........now the jumps and sprints are a totally different story. Therefore a little bit of training the right way could definatly get him to states due to weakness in the district.

Unfortunately trying to get access to sucessfull college coaches is also quite difficult around here

one book i can recommend for actual workouts is:

"Training Profiles: high school boys distance" by John Nepolitan (American Track&Field)

you don't have to do or copy the workouts verbatim, but once you read a bunch of the workouts you'll get a sense of what to do. They give alot of the top long past and recent high school grads and current high school students, many prominent guys like Chris Lukezic, Chris Solinsky, Charlie Gruber, Josh McDougal, Nick Willis and Nate Brannen. It's a very old-looking cheap paperback - got it for like under 15 bucks at the local running store, but i assure you the book's pretty up to date.

Run 100 miles per week, at just under your AT threshold, for 8-10 weeks. Make sure 3 of the runs are 90 minutes to 2 hours duration.

For the next 3 weeks find a 400m hill and run repeats up and down that hill for a half hour, 3x weekly. Drop your total weekly mileage by 10-15% depending upon fatigue. Make sure one weekly run is 2 hours duration.

For the next month drop the hill repeats and run 3x1-mile on the track twice weekly with reduced recovery time each week (start at 90 seconds then drop 25 seconds each week). Drop your weekly mileage by another 10-15% and keep the weekly long run.

This should bring you to your racing phase or goal race.

Drop the weekly mileage by another 15%, reduce the long run to 60-90 minutes.

From this point, for the next 6 weeks to 2 months you should focus on shorter intervals. See if the runner is able to run tirelessly but unable to run faster, in which case add more 100-200 meter sprints or do 2-3 miles twice weekly where you sprint the straights and jog the curves on the track. If they can run fast but cannot hold the pace, do longer endurance runs.

After this 6 week to 2 month period, have them jog 3 miles a day for 2 weeks, then start anew.

Skip Stolley's piece attached is a good start:

http://www.coacheseducation.com/endur/Dev800-1600/index.html

MF

See the training logs on this page for general ideas.

http://www.jesuittrack.org/

Coach Walt Lange has developed tons of great HS kids and all have pretty much used the exact same program.

agreed, Walt Lange is just an outstanding hs middle/long distance hs coach who has developed more great ones than just about anyone in the USA

"Run 100 miles per week, at just under your AT threshold, for 8-10 weeks. Make sure 3 of the runs are 90 minutes to 2 hours duration."

Being that I didn't see any info on the runner in question, I think this is a tad ambitious. What if we're talking about a guy who's never run more than 10 miles in a week? Also, I'm no stranger to high milage as I competed at the college level, but even if the kid did have a history in running, I think that 100 mile weeks are a bit excessive for that age.

I'm sure the high school coaches in your area would appreciate hearing this (that they don't have knowledge in their sport). And since you also do not - why don't you just cut out the middle man = yourself.

So instead of passing yourself off as the person with knowledge to this young athlete (I'm assuming that is what you are going to do - if not I appologize for my presumption) just tell them where they can find these resources themselves and admit that you don't know enough about it yourself to advise them.

One of the biggest obstacle to high school athletics isn't the lack of information about training - it is too much and too many cooks in the kitchen. For example, if their HS coach is telling them to do one thing and you start telling them to do something else, how is that helping?

I don't want you to get the wrong idea - I think its great that you want to help. But if the coaches lack knowledge, you should be working with them through clinics and classes - (or someone with knowledge should be)...or you could try taking over their jobs (although they probably pay a little diffently than you are used to: 1 athlete per session for X dollars vs 50 different athletes all at the same time for X - $$. Just something to think about if you really want to help. It doesn't pay as good, but you get to help a lot of kids at a time.