Would it be more ideal to have exceptional 400 speed for the 800 or exceptional endurance? Just tryin to figure out which poor young man I pick out to become the new high school 800 dude. Perhaps I duel them. I have a 48 400 runner and a 427 miler. Neither have ever run an 800. I need one more 800 guy to complete a good 4x8. Don't know which one has more potential.
Long term it might be the 400 guy, but if you're looking for a solid 800 right now my money would be on the miler. Might not be spectacular, but if you've ever seen a 400 guy rig after 600m then you'll take a consistent 1:58-2:00 guy any day.
Of course having both of them race or time trial would give you a lot more information.
Interesting.
You could try putting them into a time trial with the miler under instructions to go out at a hard pace and the 400m guy to sit in and hope to kick at 150m to go.
It also depends what target time you are hoping them to do in an 800m. If it is, say, 1.56.0 then with splits of 57s and 59s the 400m guy is running the first lap 9s slower than his PR - at only 85% effort - so he should have quite a reserve.
General speaking, an endurance trained runner will be able to run 800 at about 10% faster PACE than a mile. A 400 sprinter will be running about 16-18% slower PACE than a 400, but the 400 guy starts a lot faster.
So for your case, a 48 sec 400 projects ~1:53, and a 4:27 miler projects ~2:00. Even with the 400 guy slowing down a lot, the miler isn't fast enough to begin with to take advantage of it.
Where the endurance-trained guys start to pick up an advantage is when they have championship events with multiple heats and the endurance guys can depend more on their superior aerobic abilities in early rounds and have more left for the final. That's not the case here.
Only one way to find out. You also have little idea if the 4:27 guy might be good over 400 and not even know it.
I hope I can get atleast one of these guys to break 1:58. We have a 1:54, 1:59, 2:02, for our other three 4x800 positions and our 4th kid just can't seem to break 2:08. I suppose I could try running both of them since each could be faster then my 2:02 kid, but he has worked so hard for that spot...I hate to see him lose it.
why dont you just put together a "b squad" and have the 48 400 runner lead off against the 4:27 miler and whoever wins gets the spot.
I agree with you Dave. Just an all out race to decide the best. Thats what my team did with me and I broke a 1:56 with my first 800, the miler went 1:59. BTW we did this in basically basketball jerseys because our school couldn't afford new jerseys but they could for the girls.
The miler will do better mentally. Sprinters generally are pysched out by anything longer than 1 lap.
Most of the best 800m guys are made into 800/1500 in college, not 400/800. Most, not all.
Why wouldn't the 4:27 be on that relay already over the 2:08 guy? 4:27 is decent enough wheels that 2:00 or under should come easy. Is this HS or college?
My bad just saw it is HS, is this 4:27 guy more of a two miler that does the mile on occasion?
In high school, we had a good 4 by 8, and so did our rival school. Going into the conference meet, their leadoff leg (usually a 1.57 or so) got injured, and they needed to throw somebody else in. I ran leadoff for my team and usually split 1.56-1.57 They chose to throw in a 400 guy and have him lead off. His 400 PR was 49xx. He sat on me for 600m, then blew me away in the last 150. He split 1.54 in his first 800.
Not saying that your 400m guy will replicate that, but that's what happened to me.
We had a :51 400m guy on our 4x8 team back in the day. His best was 2:09. The problem with fast 400m guys moving up to the 800m is that once that start training for the endurance needed to run the 800m they cease to be fast 400m guys anymore. So you take a :51 guy and train him for endurance for the 800m and he becomes "only" a :53-54 guy but then can break 2:00 for the duece.
Then again sometimes you have strange guys like the guy above. There was a guy from another school who always raced in a full body spandex who would run :23, ;49, 1:55. He was the whitest white kid I knew and had some get up and go wheels.
Alan
it all depends on how the 400 guy trains. Some people never run over 150 in training thus making it difficult to do an 800. If you have a 400 guy who trains like Clyde Hart trains 400 guys then would stand a much better chance in the 1/2.
Run them both in a 600 meter time trial to get an idea.