Sub 1:50 800m Training

the grass thing was a joke... lol

I agree the theory does have flaws, even more than just the one you pointed out.

I also agree that the 400 and 800 are different energy system wise, but not totally. The point I was trying to make was that as the overall race time gets faster the ratios start to put more emphasis on shorter (time) energy systems.

Yes you are correct I was going to do two sets of 10 but my body was not feeling it that day. The day was programed to be low-intensity, I felt that a break was necessary to keep focused on the task at hand for the day. The days follow a Hi-Lo pattern.

The 4X20 will eventually progress into Speed Endurace work by the end of the spring, something like 6X150m with full recovery. You have to start somewhere, if the accel and maxV abilites aren't good enough you won't be able to develop your Speed Endurace to the fullest, and Special Endurance I and II to a smaller extent.

This isn't really in response to your post but others. If I were to start doing tempo runs now durring GPP the would probably be slightly over 6 minutes for no more than 2.5 miles. This would be too far removed from anything similar to 800m racing.

The reason you do tempo runs is not biomechanical similarity to your race- they function to develop aerobic metabolism, key in an 800 which is about 2/3rds aerobic.

I'm not only talking about biomechanical effeciancy. Metabolically it is not close to my aerobic pace durring an 800m.

What pace does one revert to....

I think Pmoax has it spot on....you use your CP system for the first 16-18 seconds (this mabye only 12 seconds worth in the fall but the sharpening work lengthens it out with an enzymatic response to speed endurance work) and you hopefully can leg out 150m in the first 18 seconds. Next your body shifts into using your anaerobic power and you are trying to maintain pace while slowly decelerating. If you have built up a good speed base, done the work building up the 200-400m reps with LESS than 3min recovery (so your CP stores dont replenish) you can stretch this phase out as the primary feeling for another 400-500m. Then you start to feel the monkey on your back. You have two things occur

1. You do start reverting to aerobic power systems. If you build up your power base, you can hold the speed longer than you would have imagined, and come home the last 200m well enough. Remember it isnt that your aerobic power pace is 28 seconds, but rather that you are already going 26 second pace you use your aerobic power to slow down less fast.

2. Secondly you can switch over from striding to sitting, and move the power generation from back-end mechanics to front end. Lactic acid build I found is 65% systemic ie throughout your whole body) and 35% regional. If you have blown out your glut and hamstrings, you might still have some gas left in your quads and hip flexors. This is why you do drills, weights, and hills to get to the next level.

Given Pmoax natural speed I am certain with 8 weeks of training he could run a 500m in 1:05. With 6 months of training he can run a 600m in 1:19. Without aerobic strength, I fear he will have a hard time "coming home" off that pace. Difference between a 16:40 5k strenth and a 18:30 5k strength is the difference between coming home in 28 on the last 200m or coming home in 33. It is the difference between going to the Olympic Trials or going home after your college league meet. This is why the best 800m guys spend 75-80 percent of there training during the year on strength.

Pmoax

Try the following

800m in 2:30...400 jog

800m in 2:25.....400 jog

800m in 2:20.....400 jog

Just get that workout booked.

Same week do

3*1 mile in 5:30...30 seconds rest...fake tempo run

Start adding an 800 rep every two weeks at the next level down (ie add in 800 in 2:15 next) and add 800m to the tempo run. Once you get to 5*800m start moving your times down slowly. Once you get to 4 miles, start to reduce the rest until you cut it out.

Build your Sunday run to 10 miles....good form, 7 minute pace. Something happens to you after around 8 miles...legs get heavy and you have to start concentrating on form. You will remember this feeling at the end of an 800m.

Do only one real "speed" workout per week

on the off days 3 out of the 4 do 100-150 strides to keep your speed fresh.

12 weeks of this in Jan/Feb/Mar you will feel "slow" but you will be amazed that you can hang onto pace in races. You will think you are racing above your head. It will be because you are running on strength without having the speed endurance work yet. Then start your normal regime and see how much of a higher peak you end up with.

up to you!

Here's the Yuriy Borzakovskiy articel everyone was looking for:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=1296241&page=0

can an 800m guy get by without a dedicated tempo run? I usually finish off most of my distance runs with 5-15 minutes at a high-end aerobic pace and feel like my threshold as been developed to a very high level off this work.

Thanks for your detailed response OS4. We will be able to test a few of these out as I have a 500m and 600m on the 17th of January.

I will probably add the 800's back in. I had them in my last 4 week gpp, but I felt the gain from them was minimal so I wanted to build into them more, but I like your progression.

I deff felt slow on my 600m a couple weeks ago but I felt very strong which gave me a positive outlook for the season.

A summary

Ovett 80-100mpw up to 120mpw avg pace sub 6 minutes

Cram 80mpw max, 14 mile long run, avg pace 5:40s

Snell 100mile weeks

Borz 70-75mpw

Wottle 70-80mpw

Cruz 70-80mpw in singles 5:20-5:30 pace

Butcher ran 14:0x 5k and 30 for the 10k, clearly had endurance

Rodal 65-75+

Coe-some doubt about this, I would say in the base phase at least 60, avg 70, up to 80.

Harbig (old school 46.0/1:46 guy) 7-13 miles a day

Kimutai (1:42 guy) 70mpw

Vasala (1:44) long runs up to 37km, mileage up to 130, avg 80-85

Herb Elliot 60-80mpw, intense

Jim Ryun up to 120mpw, avg 12 miles a day

Lots of 70-80 mile weeks, with some athletes going up to 100-120. Your comment from earlier that it is "never necessary to go over 40 miles per week" is a joke. The important thing is, even if they are not doing high mileage they are getting their aerobic system developed from somewhere else-lots of work at 5k pace (Coe), cross training or they already have it from lots of exercise as a kid. Doing lots of 150s and 200s is not enough to race well over 800m.

Hey there OS4, can you possibly email me, I have a few questions...

justin.rinaldi@anz.com

Thanks

Where did I say it was "never necessary" to go over 40 miles a week. I do not ever remember ever saying that, and if I did that would be out of context.

This thread is starting to ask an important question for elite 800m racing, which is: how do you move a more 400m person up to the 800m? Apologizes to those of you outside the US, but I will use our homeland woes as my examples. Johnny Gray had excellent speed, but he also ran a 3:38 1500m. He definately worked strength. I think it is fairly clear that you need to be a "skinny" 400m guy rather than a thicker one....you just cant lug around a big set of quads and arms efficiently.

Mark Everett had incredible speed....he split 43.3 and earned a gold medal on one of the World Championship 4x400 relays in addition to the bronze he earned in (I think) 1995. He was consistent at a US level, fairly inconsistent at an international level, and PR was 1:43.2..To my knowledge he never was a sub 4 minute miler (I dont ever even remember hearing whether he ran a decent mile).

How do you move up a 400m guy? Borza is the best roadmap we have given his overwhelming speed. He also really races well, keeps inside his zone until he can unleash his kick. If you saw this past Olympics, he had a rough heat that favored the strength runners, and he came up short in a tactical 1:46 ish race after laying out a 1:42 a month earlier.

Even if you have a great deal of speed, I think you have to commit to strength training eventhough it will be frustrating and slow at first. Good coaching needs to play a part here...it is not just writing the workouts but recognizing the talents of certain athletes quickly and encouraging them to move up in events so that they can be more competitive. Not only do you need to be a good assessor of talents, but you need to be able to know the athlete well enough to be convincing (few athletes want to move up and do the extra work). There is risk that it wont work, and you need a source of confidence.

I new some that had aerobic talent, and those who greatly improved aerobically under structured training. Some dont, and that is something worth learning....if you cant develope aerobically to running around a 15:30 5k I just dont believe you are going to be able to break 1:47. Not to say that 1:47-1:49 wont make you a very competitive university level 800m runner, but you will not be able to compete at the national level in the US.

Still Searching for someone out there to keep on Symmonds heels while he is in his prime.

One interesting note on Ovett - and I believe this was mentioned in the recent thread about his training - his training programme was notable for the abscence of runs exceeding 10 miles, even though his weekly totals would still surpass 100 miles regularly.

Just saying.

Another interesting note: Borzakovskiy does a ridiculous amount of cross training, drills, felxibility, strength, and the like... they have this whole "OFP" (Overall Fitness Program) thing that seems to be aimed at becoming a better overall[i/] athlete.

I see what your saying and I agree. Just because I don't think I will reach that level of aerobic ability this season does not mean that I do not think I will ever reach it.

There was a thread not too long ago where KD and Duane Solomon ran a 5k road race and both were just slightly under 15:30. Those guys are the elite of the United States, representing us at the World Stage.

If it were as easy as adding some strength and endurace work belive me I would already be there but it is not that simple. I'm in the process of slowly moving up and increasing my capacity without loosing any speed. Very few 800m runners have 6.77e speed in the 55m.

Ah sorry the 40 mile per week thing was talking slightly out of context-you were refering to training for high schoolers such as yourself and not elite athletes like the examples I gave. My apologies.

But still "How do you know for sure that you cannot run a good 800m of little aerobic work? Have you done this?", the facts speak for themselves, a huge part of the 800m race is aerobic in nature, and a look at the training of the fastest 800m athletes of all time shows that 80-90% of the training in the base phase is aerobic-hard 10 milers, tempos, intervals etc, maybe one day a week of 150s or 200s.

THe fact that you are trying to run 1:50 but consider a tempo to be 2.5 miles at 6+ minute pace shows your aerobic weakness. All of the sprints in the world will not make up for that, because for you speed is clearly not the limiting factor for you: endurance is, so that's what you should be working on. It makes sense for you to work on your strengths but to ignore your weaknesses is asking for failure. I know you say you are taking the long term approach but they best way to do that would be to add in aerobic work NOW, in December-February. And to say that a 600m time trial shows aerobic capacity is a bit bizzare...

There is probably a reason why those 800m runners don't have that speed (I have no clue about 55m times but I will take your word). Time spent building speed is time not spend building endurance. You need to find the right balance for your event. If you can run your fastest possible 100m, you will not be in shape to run your fastest 800m.If you don't do aerobic training this year, I don't see how you can expect to improve it. As far as KD 5k, it was not run in a season where he is in good shape. He did run 3:45 1500m which is probably a better indication of his aerobic capacity.

Pmoax wrote:

I'm in the process of slowly moving up and increasing my capacity without loosing any speed. Very few 800m runners have 6.77e speed in the 55m.

What tactics would you recommend for a runner with a background like Pmoax? You said he could use Borzakovsky as a guide, should he race like him too (even splits)? Or should he take advantage of the fact that a fast first lap will be more comfortable for him and stake his claim there (having taken your recommendation and worked on his aerobic support so that the monkey-phase isn't TOO slow)?

I ask because in the Borzakovsky article it sounded like his racing style is just his "style", what he feels good with, didn't really mention about how it is dictated by his 400 or 1500 strength/weakness.

Incidentally, Symmonds uses Borza tactics, and he's an 800/1500 man. He's said that it's for lack of speed, and dreams one day of going with the leaders.

Any comments on how Borza and Symmonds actually do have racing differences (or how I clearly don't know the difference between tactics and a strategy) are appreciated. Thanks!

If someone is running 5k at 18something then it´s not a matter of only VO2max work but also lack of stamina/strength is obvious. You will need 3 aerobic endurance type "sessions"

1 easy runs of 30+ mins as much as possible

2 stamina/strength LT-CV (CV from Tinman)

3 VO2max (in the pre-competition- and competition period)

And especially now in the winter it´s time to get as much base endurance and stamina/strength as possible while maintaining or even improving (depents from athlete´s background) top end speed (and the factors behind it; power and technique/relaxation at full speed).

But I have to admit that when speaking of real 400m specialist moving up then I don´t know what would be the best program for him/her to follow but I would recommend

a simple system where those above sessions would be in

as much as possible (shorter LT-CV-VO2max reps to avoid lactate accumulation) with more top end speed work (and factors behind it) than normally, and race paced reps for technique. From these elements you should create a repeatable schedule to follow. Repeatable means that you shouldn´t get injured and you should be able to recover.

Then try to get progression going until top form is reached close to desired peaking and try to maintain that form.

I have written.

Borzakovsky economizes his energy well and leaves some anaeobi power for the end of the race, his turnover is so quick that he can accelerate better than anyone in the world and make up 20m on almost anyone. His weakness is when he tries to stay at the front of the race that constantly accelerates or has varying paces....it really takes it out of his legs, and you could see he got stuck (like Symmonds) having to make up pace on the backstretch of his Semi in the OG, and then when he needed to kick again he came up short by 30m. Uneven pace saps your aerobic and anaerobic power, and with Borza he needs to economize to unleash his kick. Borza likes to hang out of the pack and then pass everyone in the last 150m. Johnny Gray economized by leading as long as possible and just running his race. 1992 was his perfect season and he came up only 15 tics from a PR and 3m from a gold medal.

Symmonds is faster than most think, but he is probably correct that he shouldnt be going out in 49/115. As long as he can navigate throgh crowds better he should stick to running from the back. If you look at his Semi in the OG he blinked on the backstretch and lost 3m to the pack. He then unleashed his BIG finish too early, passing the entire field in lane 3 from 600 to 720 in the race. With 60m to go, he looked at his feet and you knew he had the monkey on his back. Nick had a great season, but if the armchair quarterback is doing the autopsy you would have to say that he needed to be more alert, and then not panic and be patient and confident that he can come into the homestraight with anyone even down 5m and run them down given how strong he is. If I was in the semis of the OG I can't say I wouldnt be prey to the andrenaline as well.

That said, Nick should be tougher to beat in most cases because he is so strong. As long as he has contact in a fast race he can close well even at the international level. If he is in an uneven pace race he should be able to compete well also.

To your question, for the speed 800m the best tactics is to make ZERO moves and to cover other's moves as smoothly as possible. economize the entire way and kick from 120m and no further out. The faster the race the better as long as you dont have to accelerate at any point before the final kick.

KD in the Olympic Trials lost the race at the 200m mark re-acclerating to fight off Johnson for the lead...took away his last 50m. No uneven paces for the speed guys.