college middle distance workouts

your high school coach won't appreciate you going behind his/her back...

i don't run for my high school. I am just curious as to what some people do in college for the 800

Other coaches will have better or more specific suggestions, but certainly 300's seem to help (in ways that 200's and 400's don't, for some reason). Try them in sets of three (or two or maybe four), with good recoveries between sets and 100m walk or jog between reps. (I remember reading that Coe and his dad also felt that 300's were really worthwhile.)

Otherwise, I frequently had my runners do "modeling" workouts. My experience as athlete and coach was that, in terms of perceived effort and general strategy, the 800 was not so much a 400/400 event as it was a 500/300 event (or maybe a 300/200/300 event!). So I would have them open their workout with a 500 at race pace and end it with a 300, as fast as possible while staying controlled.

In between those two reps, I'd have them do any number of different things. Often these middle workouts would be geared individually to the athlete's "other" event (400 or 1500). Some did sets of 150's at ~400 pace with 50m walk recoveries, 60secs for each run-and-rest; others might do a workout of 400's or 600's, or a pyramid of longer reps.

The point was that the day's final 300 generally came pretty soon after the "middle" workout's last rep. So they weren't very well recovered for it, but still usually did a pretty good job (goal pace or faster). Later I would point out that they had done the opening 500 in X and the final 300 in Y; that the sum of those was a pretty good 800; and that their so-called "rest" between the two had been that whole middle workout.

The point was, I wanted them to run the first part of their race properly, not hoping but *knowing* that they had the ability to run a good final 300 even if they felt very fatigued after the opening 500. These modeling workouts seemed to give them that confidence.

10 times 400m at mile pace, 200m jog rest. It's a staple - we do it once every two weeks or so.

Cutdown 300s - 6 times 300m with 3 min recovery, starting just above 800 pace and working down to well under 800 pace for the last rep.

1200m cruise intervals - 5-6 times 1200m threshold running, 1 min recovery.

400m hills - 8-10 times 400m hill, jogback recovery

Cutdown 600s - 3 times 600m with 5 min recovery, first one around mile pace, second one a bit faster, last one just off 800m pace.

A good middle distance workout.

Long warm-up.

1000 at 1-2 seconds per lap slower than mile race (goal) pace

Walk full 400

800 at roughly mile race pace

Jog 100, walk 300

600 at roughly 1K race pace

Jog 200, walk 200

400 at roughly 800 race pace

Jog 400

200 near top end

Long cool down.

a) 4 sets of ( 4 x 200 meters) 30sec between repeats and 3 min between sets

b) 4 sets of ( 2 x 300m) 30sec between repeats and 5 min between sets

c) 4 x 800 meters at 94% of 800 meter race velocity with 3 min rests

d) 4 x 1500 meters at 94% of 1500 meter race pace with 3 min rests

d) 7 x 300 meters at 800 meter race pace with 45 sec - 1 Minute rest

e) 4 x 400 meters at 800 meter race pace with 1 min rests

d) 3 x 800 meter at 1500 meter race pace with 1500 meter jog recovery

Yesterday's WO:

6x100

then

2,2,8 at mile pace

4X(2,2,4) at mile pace

90 sec rest within sets, 3 minutes between sets

bump

When I competed I did a mix of runs to train for both the 800m and 1500m.

Eg, 2 sets of 1x400 +1x600

These were based off times.

If you came into the 600m @ 1:50, then you needed to get that or lower in the second rep.