Starting to feel tired during practice

Hey, Mr. 2:04...I'm sure that your 16 years of life has made you an expert on training, but until you are running just a bit faster, you might want to show some class and refrain from calling your coach an idiot. While I do agree that it might be a bit early in the season to be running repeats of 8 X 300 @ 42, a month from now you had better be doing just that if you have ANY hope of running under 2:00 for the 800. Rather than name-calling, could you talk to the coach about longer intervals such as 6 X 800m at 2:22 w/ a 400 jogging recovery between each. Conclude the workout w/ 4 X 200m at 32 w/ a 200m jogging recovery between each. As a second workout of the week (2 days later) say on a Wednesday, try 8 X 300 at 45 w/ a recovery of 300m between each. This would be great early season training (late March) for someone of your ability. Between now and the second week of May, you could REALLY improve if you gradually increased the intensity to eventually be able to run the 8 X 300 at 42 with a 2-3 minute recovery (4 minutes is too much). I would speculate that 1:57-1:58 800 and 4:25 1600 would easily be doable. The positive thing is that you have done good base work during the winter, but as the spring progresses and the quality increases, you'll have to come off the mileage during this cycle. After track season you can begin a mileage buildup over the summer to prepare for cross country in the fall. During this buildup, I would encourage you to work up to 70-75 mpw. Good luck!

Thanks, i agree, name calling is a little immature, but my coach lacks running knowledge and is very stubborn. He's one of those guys who supposedly ran at olympic trials and was top in the nation or whatever. He believes that his workouts work when they don't. I have talked to another coach (one of the best in the state) about what I should do and he has been the one giving me preseason workouts and workouts to do when i don't have to run my normal coaches workouts. I think we have plenty of speed but just lack the strength from a lack of longer intervals. Thank you and any advice is appreciated.

What is very significant in what you've said thus far is that you recognize the necessity of getting strength-oriented longer intervals in during the earlier parts of the season. With the athletes that I coach, I try to look at their training as a year-round continuum with phases that gradually increase the work load each time a given phase is repeated. With gradual progression toward the high-quality work as the season progresses, you'll be amazed at the improvement that you make. Based upon your comments, I think that the coach that you have talked to (apart from your "regular" coach)is giving you very solid training advice. I look forward to future posts that you make to see how you progress. With a positive attitude and proper training the sky is the limit! Good luck!

heartbrake drake wrote: Well do these workouts monday, tuesday, and thursday with easy runs on monday and friday.

There's your problem. The solution? Take it VERY easy on Monday and Friday. Also, "sandbag' the Tuesday workout...or at least do it at an easier effort. You can't do hard intervals two days in a row. That's why you're feeling dead.

Do you race on Wednesday and Saturday?

Also, sleep more and eat more. Especially eat more carbs. These are very important; do not overlook them.

So only go hard on Thursday? And sometimes we have tri meets on Tuesday but I usually run slow because I feel as if racing twice a week isn't going to help me. Our meets are on Saturday. I get like 8 hours of sleep a day and eat pasta like 4 days out of the week. But to the other guy since I am lacking strength intervals, should I just do squats or something?

As 777 so aptly said, I would definitely NOT do hard workouts 2 days in a row. That would certainly lead to the "tired-legs" that you originally pointed out. Personally, I think that if most of your meets are on Saturdays, I've always liked Mondays as longer intervals and Wednesdays as the shorter, speed-oriented effort. Tuesday and Thursdays would be recovery days and Friday (pre-race day)should be a light 1-2 mile warm up, some easy stride-outs and easy 1 mile cool down. If the meets during the week are less significant, I would train through them until mid-April, but a competition should still be viewed as a hard effort and as such, I would replace one of the week's quality workouts with the meet when that applies.

Ok cool, so sandbag Monday, hard tuesday, easy run Wednesday, hard Thursday, easy Friday, meet Saturday, and long run Sunday? And no strength training is needed to make up for my lack of longer intervals.

Well, in the off-season, this format is OK but I prefer Hard Monday and Wednesday w/ Recovery Runs on Tuesday and Thusday, easy on Friday and race on Saturday w/ an easy, longer run on Sunday during the

season.

Also, with regard to strength training...that's great until the last three or four weeks of the seasson, then when I taper, I really cut the strength training back.

You're confusing "strength" intervals with strength training ie weights. When people refer to building strength with long intervals they're referring to aerobic strength, which cannot be replaced with all the squats in the world.

You and your coach are running you into the ground with stupid speed work. In a typical school schedule, there is no time or place for base building which is absolutely essential before even thinking about anaerobic speed work. That schedule calls for you to race every weekend and run gut wrenching workouts during the week.

Bottom line: This is March, about 6 months away from fall season. I would drop out of the team right now and train on your own. Get a hold of a Lydiard schedule (buy a book on Amazon or search "Lydiard" online) and use it between now and Sept., including working up to and running 100 MPW. In Sept. you will be Speedy Gonzalez, doing no speed work whatsoever. Use your team workouts as speed work in the fall. In the meantime, get in decent mileage.

You'll have to figure out what to tell your coach about your quitting his stupid team at this point; the truth is always nice but you may have to cook up some kind of story just to keep peace in the family.

Forget "core"; its unrelated to running and will actually slow you down as you add extra weight from muscle which is much harder to get rid of than fat. You run with your legs, not your arms, chest, etc. You want to look and feel like a deer, not a bull.