Me: early 30s, completely new to training for track or mid-distance, but with a not-bad background in training for longer road races. Really want to run the 800 as fast as I can.
Background: My high school didn't have a serious XC/track program (all football and basketball), but would enter those of us who wanted to run in local meets. Obviously, none of us did a lot of damage off of our fitness from other sports (I did XC ski and cycle pretty seriously), considering that we never had a single workout on the track and without something like letsrun basically jogged a lot, did fartleks and raced most weekends. I enjoyed it, though, and it started a love of running that led me to follow the sport closely, and enjoy life as a weekend warrior when I came got into road racing a decade later.
When I did track, my best results (and the most fun) came in the 800, where I did 2:07. After training by myself and racing on the roads for a few years (16:30, 35:40, 1:17:50) I feel like I'd like to race track again. I'd also like to do things in a more organized way, and maybe join a club.
Problem: The thing is that I have no clue whatsoever what 800 training entails. Reading that article on Jessica Ennis a few days ago, I saw that 4x (2x 200) at race pace, with about 30 seconds rest, was one of her workouts. Is this the main thing -- lots of short race pace intervals? I actually don't run at 10k pace or faster that much, and frankly think I'd tear both hamstrings if I did a mile at 800 pace in one day...
How can I work my way DOWN to start running track again?