Just Steady Mileage and Raw Speed: Could I Run a Fast 800/1500 Off this?

I've often wondered about this. In my opinion, it depends on what you mean by raw speed.

I think you have to have more of the efforts from 500-800m in training. If you incorporated those once every 10 days or so, you'd probably have a shot at a good time.

maybe not your first race, but if you have 6-8 weeks of racing, you will develop the specific endurace by the end of the season. i'd be very interested in following your results.

This worked for me, took my 800m time from 2:14, in September, to who knows what 8 months later. I say who knows what because I didn't race an 8 because I burnt out hard and had to take a month off. But, I did run a 1:24 600m, right before the wheels fell off.

If you can control the sense of invinsibility that you will inevitably get from getting so fit, and take down weeks here and there, you will do very well.

A some years ago, there was an article about Yuri Borzakovskiy's training that was translated from Russian. The core of the plan is alternating distance running of about 10K with 400 meter sprint training:

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

Now, I an NOT suggesting that the OP or anyone else copy this plan. 400 meter training is hard for a lot of people, and you have to make sure you leave time for recovery. If I was doing this, I would do more like Clyde Hart level of intensity (80-90%, or intensive tempo) and probably very little above 90%. But obviously the concept works.

I think this will work for 800 for most people. But whether people at the LRC typical poster talent level can do the sprint training and get in enough volume (and still recover) to allow a fast 1500 is probably debatable. Coe only did sprint training once every 2 weeks and the Ethiopians only do it once a week.

Why would you want to train like this instead of normal training? Do you hate medium length intervals or something?

You need easier days. You can't go steady every day, especially if you plan on having some workouts in there, which you do.

So then you might say - well, if I need an easy day, I'll take one. Which makes sense, but I think you'll end up needing one or two every week, so you might as well write them into the plan.

But I see what you're getting at - keep it simple. Turn off your brain most days and just get out there and run at an honest aerobic pace. Two days a week get some faster stuff in there to prep for the middle distances. I get it.

I just wonder if you'll be leaving out too much important work from mile pace to tempo pace. I've found that after a summer & fall of training like a 5k guy and building my endurance, it only takes 1 or 2 rust buster races before I'm within a few seconds of my 800 pr. So I'm a 1:54 guy. I can run 1:58 in December based off my fitness from the fall. You'll see elites do this too, opening in 1:47 before getting down to 1:43 a few months later. So you can run a decent middle distance race just by focusing on the endurance part of it.

But that means things like tempo runs, repeat miles, repeat 800's. You need to callous the body, build stamina, get used to running at uncomfortable aerobic paces.

I don't know if you'll get enough of that with your plan. The power and speed is more like icing on the cake, but you might be forgetting the cake itself. I don't know if mostly steady running will do it.

This has the potential to be a great thread.

The year I tried something very similar to OP, tempos were non-existent for me. The longest track rep I did was 600m, and we ran on track three days a week. Two of those days were workouts at 1500m pace, the other day was a combo of slightly longer stuff and pure speed; usually, pure speed in the form of 60m or 80m repeats, followed by stuff at 3k pace like 400m repeats with short recovery:

My fav workout I did back then:

4x60, walkback recovery:

5x600m, 90secs rec. that hurt like a mother...

Coming into racing season, that 5x600m changed to 4x500m, 5mins between reps, and that would be pretty hard, faster than 1500m pace anyway.

my schedule last spring was three "sprint" workouts per week

T am - 4x200 @ 400 pace or faster, 5min walking recovery

Th am - reps of 200-600m @ 800/mile pace, full jogging recovery

Sat - 8x flying 30-60m or 4x100m all-out, full walking recovery, then

1x300m or 1x400m all-out

(called them speed endurance, relaxed speed, and power speed, respectively)

and three "aerobic" workouts per week:

T pm - 70min progression run

Th pm - 70min run w/20min tempo

Sun - 90min w/ the last 30min hard

easy runs of 40-60min on M/W/F/Sat w/strides

pretty much no running @ 3K-5K pace

went from 2:02 to 1:57, 4:28 to 4:20

personally i think you could run a fast 800 of the schedule you propose, but without more runs longer than 60min, i think you'll really hit a wall on lap 3 of a quick mile race. for me, running hard the last 30min of a 90min long run on dead legs really teaches me to focus on form/muscle recruitment/holding it together, stuff you gotta do on lap 3.

i think even 1-2 fast 8-10 milers would really boost your endurance compared to all these 30min runs.

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