this is impossible, yes?

I'd say it is next to impossible, unless your 800 time is real slow.

In college we did 8 x 400 with 60 seconds rest at mile pace. Damn was that a tough workout. I can't imagine adding 6 more onto that, shortening the recovery, and running 2-3 seconds faster for each.

The guy is either insane, or runs his 800's in 3:15.

Your Asian Friend wrote:

I'd say it is next to impossible, unless your 800 time is real slow.

In college we did 8 x 400 with 60 seconds rest at mile pace. Damn was that a tough workout. I can't imagine adding 6 more onto that, shortening the recovery, and running 2-3 seconds faster for each.

The guy is either insane, or runs his 800's in 3:15.

I dont know about 800 pace but I think mile pace is possible. This sounds alittle like what Scott Simmons has his runners do. They do like 20x400 and you get 2 minutes before the next one, so if you run a 60 you get 60 rest. Run an 80 and get 40 rest. I am not sure the pace exactly though but it wasnt jogging. Also I beleive they would do hammer ones where they run as hard as they can on lets say #'s 16 and 19 and the goal was to try to go back and maintain the original pace in the next one. He said that this best simulated what happened in races with fatigue.

I have never heard that workout (20x400 with limited rest) done faster than 3k pace other than in Once a Runner.

I've done 12x400 indoors at 1500 pace with 60 second rest and that hurt like a witch's tit.

I am assuming that it is a senior's workout.

I would say that for anyone with a good 800 time it is probably impossible. But, for someone who can only run say 2:10 or slower, it definitely isn't impossible. 65's or slower are not impossible to do 14 times. Heck, some people do that 12.5 times in a row with no recovery!(although, it might be impossible for that person if they could only run 2:10)

If you can run a 1:48 though, then it's getting difficult. 14 54's with 40 secs recovery might be impossible.

I do that workout very often but I have another name for it. I call it 5 miles @ 8:00 pace.

I have a different interpretation -- My guess is that "800 pace" means "the pace that we usually run when we run 800 intervals", not "800m race pace".

I've done 16 x 400 like this (80 seconds with 40 sec. recovery), but I couldn't do more than a handful of 400s at my 800 race pace, and I'm not all that fast...

I used to run with a club where the coach had a chart with paces for 400, 800, 1200, mile, etc. repeats based on your 5K or 10K times. We'd often do workouts that were written as x times y meters at 800 pace where the pace referred to the chart, not a race distance and pace. I was a little surprised when did 600m repeats at 400 pace one time though! Ouch...

Can any of you joe's on here do 10x400m in 60 seconds or faster with 60 seconds rest, straight through? I cannot and I run like the wind.

I'm sure Bekele or a younger Geb could do it off their 'official' 800m PB (probably like 1.52 or something?, but they could obviously go faster)