Breaking 2:00 in the 800m

What's your 400? 15/16?

You're gonna want about a 54 flat to get there unless you have super endurance. Likewise, if you have poor endurance you should have a faster 400 in order to get it done.

Just because you run slower on your splits than in the open race doesn't mean you wont break 2:00 in the 800. I was the same always ran faster on the open than on the relay unless i ran the leadoff leg.

At your age you are going to keep improving.

This improvement may not be linear but you will get there, maybe not in the first race. Anyway if you are running for your school I would run for position

Sub 2:00 800 wrote:

Currently my PR is a 2:01 which I set about 3 weeks ago. Back then, I felt really confident in terms of breaking 2:00, but now I'm feeling less confident because I've been hitting 2:07's-2:09's, but these have all been in relays and during relays my sense of pacing is terrible (ex: going out in 60, then finishing in 67-68). At any rate, my team hasn't been doing any real speedwork; we're currently doing strength/pace work such as 8-12 400's at 70 and 12-16 200's at 35; the hardest we've done is 400's at 65, then 70 and alternating that. According to my coach, we're supposed to start real speedwork this week, and will alternate weeks with that and strength/pace work. So once I get real speed in, will it be possible for me to shave off 2 seconds? And if so, could I do more than just that? I'm currently 15, turning 16.

1/10

I've seen it go either way. I knew a guy who opened his season with a 2:02 and finished with a 2:08. One of my friends ended his jr. year with a 2:02, opened his sr. year with a 2:09 and ran 1:58 at State. He ran a 53 in the 400 and 4:31 in the 1600 too. Check out Daniels' Running Formula for the chapter about training for the 800/1500. Good stuff in there.

ukathleticscoach wrote:

At your age you are going to keep improving.

This improvement may not be linear but you will get there, maybe not in the first race. Anyway if you are running for your school I would run for position

That generally seems to work better for me; when I hit that 2:01 I was running for position. I'll see how it goes this week, I have a race this week against a supposed sub 4:20 1600m runner. I'm not expecting to beat him at all, but I'll see how close I can get.