Not a whole lot interesting to report this week. I tried a new (for us) session with my varsity type kids.
After a short run, they ended up in the arboretum adjacent to our school. It isn't very big, but I do have a 1200m loop measured out in there. I set out cones every 200m and told the kids I wanted 3-4 loops of the 1200 doing 200 fast, 400 easy continuously. The goal was to get the kids to elevate their HR on the fast 200's then not slow the run down too much on the 400. I told them to take times for the run and time their 200s as well. It seemed simple enough for me....kids run in groups, one guy gets the 200s for the group while someone else keeps a watch running for the duration of the run.
The girls: "coach, that workout was pretty easy, we liked it"
Me: "how fast was the overall run"
The girls: "we don't know, but we didn't slow down much after the 200s"
Me: OK, how fast were the 200s?
The girls: "52-54"
Me: No wonder it was easy.
The boys: "we ran 4 loops of the 200 like you wanted" (7 miles total). We averaged 7:07 pace during the 200/400.
Me: "How fast were the 200s?"
The boys: "We don't know"
The long and the short....it was an easyish workout but set the precedent for some harder efforts later doing the same type of thing. I told them that eventually, I thought they should be able to go 6000-7200m like that, averaging somewhere a bit slower than tempo pace, with the 200s at 2mile race pace. So, a kid thinking about sub 10 for 2 miles might run his 200s in 37-38, with the "off" 400s in 97-98, to average 4:30 per 1200 or 6:00 per mile. Seems like this would be a good way to get some low stress race pace work in while keeping the effort levels managable and getting a solid sustained aerobic effort at the same time. I don't think I'd give them goal times to hit, except to say that the 200s would be at about 2 mile RP and keep the pace up on the recovery 400s.