16x200 workout

This workout will always feel hard!

When i was training for 800/1500 one of my hardest sessions was 2x4x200 with 30 seconds between each 200 and 5 minutes between the sets. Each 200 had to be no slower than 800 pace. This was a killer session despite the distance run being "only" 1600. The idea was that the last 2-3 reps of the second set should be pretty painful - similar to what you go through over the last 300 of s fast 800 or the last 500 of a fast 1500.

milermb wrote:

This workout will always feel hard!

When i was training for 800/1500 one of my hardest sessions was 2x4x200 with 30 seconds between each 200 and 5 minutes between the sets. Each 200 had to be no slower than 800 pace. This was a killer session despite the distance run being "only" 1600. The idea was that the last 2-3 reps of the second set should be pretty painful - similar to what you go through over the last 300 of s fast 800 or the last 500 of a fast 1500.

I used to do something similar in HS when I was running the 400/800. Our variation was starting on the minute (because there was only one timekeeper), but we were always a lot faster than 800 pace, usually 25-27. The other difference was that we had unlimited recovery between sets, which ended up being closer to ten minutes.

Anyway, there are a lot of ways to do 200s, depending on your objectives. I'm a big fan of workouts that inject very short, very intense speed into an otherwise aerobic effort. You get neuromuscular stimulus, you also get a brief shot of lactate that you work on clearing, you get the sudden acceleration which is supposed to induce hypertrophy in the left ventricle, and you get a very quick bounce back with no real acidosis. It's not a hard workout, but it's something to do early in the season or as a minor workout (perhaps when you need more recovery such as before a race, or if you've already done two harder efforts in the week).

Decided not to make this workout killer and just did the 200s at goal mile pace (33) with a 200 jog (1:15).

Felt very smooth and ended up averaging 32.3. (last one was 28.0).

This is a good session to get a lot of practice running goal pace/becoming more efficient at that pace, and it kept my breathing in the range of a fartlek/tempo for the overall workout- so a good aerobic stimulus, while training the legs to go mile pace.

Thanks for the help. I hope this update is useful.

Speed has been my weakness but vo2 and strength are far better for me. I ran 16x200 averaging 32.5 with 1:2.5 rest. My tempos and tempo repeats are typically in the 5:05-5:10 range. This felt more like 3k to me. What should my mile fitness be? Doing a time trial Saturday.

Ran 16x200 averaging 32.5 5 days before I ran a 4:19 full mile that I paced very poorly. It made 32s feel like a jog