How hard is it to get a HS girl to run a 2:30 800?

1styearHStrackCoach wrote:

Trying to tell if we will have a shot to have a decent 4x8. Would like to go 9:40-50 but need to find 2 other girls that I can bring down to 2:30. How hard would that be. How fast of a XC time vs. 400 time would it take to build a 2:30 800 girl? Curious on what people think. I know we will have two girls in the 2:20-2:25 range but unsure if I can get any others down to 2:30ish.

Recruiting soccer girls would be a good start. Some high schools conduct the President Award events, or do a timed mile run several times a year in middle school/high school. Getting those names and times would be great. That's how my daughter's track coach recruited. But in the end there has to be the interest. 2:30 isn't easy for a runner with no track experience who suddenly realizes track requires a lot of hard work.

High School Girls wrote:

I had a high school girl that went 1:02 mid in the 400. (Small school). She ran cross country for the school and ended up running 2:31 on a 400 program. I convinced her to keep running cross country and get stronger. The girl wants to run the mile now. Needless to say I am very excited. She had a good cross country year and is still learning to run a 5K which is not required for our dicivsion. I’m pretty sure her 800 will be much quicker than 2:31 this season!!

another year of growth and maturation- not necessarily is she going to be faster. If you've been coaching for a while, you know this already.

The school in the town where I live has a girl who ran 56.x and 2:11.x with no XC and no distance training at all and reportedly has no interest in trying to run any distance over 800m, despite looking like a distance runner and not a sprinter-type. So kudos to you as the coach for encouraging the runner to consider a range of distances to find her optimal event.

Running 2:30 for a girl really isn’t that good the hardest part will be convincing them to go out any faster than 75. Honestly if the school is lacking any talent in the distance runners your best bet might be using a sprinter who’s run 62-63 and using them on the relay. Biggest mistake coaches make in high school is letting the subpar 200-400 boys and girls keep playing around in the sprints instead of just giving the 800 a couple tries.

Brent Kavanaugh wrote:

Once I start telling them about the Devil’s Triangle and grabbing at them they generally get away from me at a sub 2:30 pace.

Amen brother, me too!

look for soccer wrote:

If you can recruit some soccer girls with a good work ethic you should have no problem.

This. Most girls that play soccer at even an upper-JV level are good enough at sustained aerobic effort and at anaerobic bursts of speed to have near-2:30 potential, even with minimal specific training. From my experience, though, a lot of the best athletes on a varsity girls' soccer team tend to drift towards the sprints, so you may want to have a powwow with the coach, or even talk with a couple players if you know any of them.

tfrrsftw wrote:

look for soccer wrote:

If you can recruit some soccer girls with a good work ethic you should have no problem.

This. Most girls that play soccer at even an upper-JV level are good enough at sustained aerobic effort and at anaerobic bursts of speed to have near-2:30 potential, even with minimal specific training. From my experience, though, a lot of the best athletes on a varsity girls' soccer team tend to drift towards the sprints, so you may want to have a powwow with the coach, or even talk with a couple players if you know any of them.

I would take this a step further and say any girl who played soccer at any reasonable level (including the lowest classifications of club and/or "C" team in high school) and who also ran cross country at a fairly high level or otherwise showed good conditioning, is a sub-2:30 girl in the making... easily.

Washedup800star wrote:

Running 2:30 for a girl really isn’t that good the hardest part will be convincing them to go out any faster than 75. Honestly if the school is lacking any talent in the distance runners your best bet might be using a sprinter who’s run 62-63 and using them on the relay. Biggest mistake coaches make in high school is letting the subpar 200-400 boys and girls keep playing around in the sprints instead of just giving the 800 a couple tries.

Yes. It's been tougher for average "distance" girls to be aggressive enough. Yet 62-64 400 girls can make the transition.

Another tip wrote:

tfrrsftw wrote:

This. Most girls that play soccer at even an upper-JV level are good enough at sustained aerobic effort and at anaerobic bursts of speed to have near-2:30 potential, even with minimal specific training. From my experience, though, a lot of the best athletes on a varsity girls' soccer team tend to drift towards the sprints, so you may want to have a powwow with the coach, or even talk with a couple players if you know any of them.

I would take this a step further and say any girl who played soccer at any reasonable level (including the lowest classifications of club and/or "C" team in high school) and who also ran cross country at a fairly high level or otherwise showed good conditioning, is a sub-2:30 girl in the making... easily.

I coached a good soccer club team in a soccer hotbed state and out of 20 players, one ran 2:25 and one ran 5:23 so likely could have run sub 2:30. Most of them could not have done it, including a few who played D1 in college- they were more sprinter-types. But the main thing is the mentality- of the 5 or 6 others who might have been physically able to do it, none of them wanted to train for track- even though many had done middle school track.

As many have said, go find some girls from the soccer team. Keep your eye out especially for the ones who tore their ACL or MCL and won’t be playing competitive soccer any more. They’ll end up being your best runners.

I just looked to the end of the 20-page MileSplit list of girls' 800m times outdoors in 2018. It goes up to #998, and that last time is 2:18.33. This is just in open 800m races. I don't know how many girls ran sub-2:30, but the number has to be huge.

Some girls ran their fastest 800m splits in relays, no doubt.

And so, based solely upon what these numbers hint at, training two more girls to run 2:30s in a 4 x 800m relay seems very plausible.

Former Sub 14:00 wrote:

My recommendation would be to not train them like how you would train a more experienced 800m runner. Most high school runners severely lack aerobic development. The 800m is around 50% aerobic and some people have recently suggested that it may lean a little bit more on the aerobic side than originally thought. I think doing a fair amount of strength training throughout the year will help a lot. Do not try to train the girl like a 400/800 runner. It doesn't work well at the HS level but is the current model (swiftly changing) at the elite level. You aren't asking her to be elite so train her more like a miler who steps down into the 800m. 2:30 isn't fast and all the speed/race pace in the world won't matter if the runner is toast with 400m to go.

Where are they weak? If they have not done much over distance, start there.

I recommend starting them out at 2 miles and hopefully progressing to 6-8 miles by mid-season.

If they come in with a good mileage basis, which nowadays is 20-30 mpw, then you can start 1000s at 5K pace

one day per week and 200/300 type work at sub-2:30 pace a second day per week.

It depends on what they have done and what their strengths are but do not neglect any spark plugs.

Early season:

Monday: warmup drills and stretching plus 4 x 100 at 85%; 1-4 x 1000 at 5K pace; warmdown

Tuesday: good warmup; 2 miles; good warmdown. Slow pace. Conversation.

Wednesday: warmup like monday; 4 laps of flying 30s; warmdown

Thursday: good warmup; If they are recovering well move to 3 miles. Pace should be slow!

Friday: warmup like monday; 6 x 200 at date pace 800 with 100 job recoveries; warmdown

*Start with 1 x 1000 the first day if the weather is nice. It's most important for them to have

a good experience with the sport. The next week if things are going well, try 2 x 1000.

Mid-season:

Monday: Same as above but you can do 8 x 100 before and after; then do

3 x 600 at current goal pace w/400 recovery.

Tuesday: Recovery day running. Perhaps 4 miles?

Wednesday: Flying 30s and or 5 x 60 at 70-80-85-90-95% of VO2Max

Thursday: Recovery day running. If it needs to be shorter do it. Some may only need a mile.

Friday: Meet? Recover for meets. Do not ask the athlete to do what you would not do.

Late Season:

You have built the long run up to 6-8 miles, keeping in mind that you need easy days!

Do not be afraid to cut the long run day down to 1-3 miles depending on how they are recovering.

Recovery is the biggest key with distance runners. Most work very, very hard.

You do running drills, stretching, and strides to warmup. Do this everyday late season.

Do warmdown running and static stretching everyday now.

Intervals can be 4 x 200 with 200 walks between. We want full recoveries.

I love 8 x 100 at between 80 to 95% VO2 Max

Speed Development continues until 2 weeks before major meets. I suggest anything between 80s and

Flying 30s.

There are drills you can do to make the Flying 30s more fun. Dave Wottle's coach did a whistle drill during

repeat 400s. They would run 400s at race pace and when he whistled they were to run near top speed until

he whistled again. He kept the distance at about 20 meters. Think of all the accelerations 800 guys have

to do.

I can't believe no one has pointed out that a 72/6:30 girl can go sub-2:30 when properly fueled with Pure Hate.

The downside is that it will probably be directed against a teammate or a coach.

Ned made a mistake.

Those whistle 400s should probably be done at mile pace not 400 pace!

Rez wrote:

400 would have to be around 65. Mile at least 6/5k at least 21.

BS. Faulty logic. I’ve coached many girls who were reluctant 800m runners. Many examples of girls who didn’t have the surrounding marks you cite who still ran 2:30 or faster.

Drawing conclusions based on faulty logic is not going to be helpful to anyone.

Deisel wrote:

I can't believe no one has pointed out that a 72/6:30 girl can go sub-2:30 when properly fueled with Pure Hate.

The downside is that it will probably be directed against a teammate or a coach.

I have exactly about 72/6:30 fitness right now and I’m pretty sure I’d only make it to 2:40-2:50 on pure hate

My PRs are 75/2:39/6:03/21:35 and at my high school, most of the 4 x 800 team went between 2:25-2:45 on very low mileage training. I agree to start with some of the 400 meter runners first or a few soccer players. The distance squad usually didn't like the 800. It was too hard and short.

Those were the days wrote:

Another tip wrote:

I would take this a step further and say any girl who played soccer at any reasonable level (including the lowest classifications of club and/or "C" team in high school) and who also ran cross country at a fairly high level or otherwise showed good conditioning, is a sub-2:30 girl in the making... easily.

I coached a good soccer club team in a soccer hotbed state and out of 20 players, one ran 2:25 and one ran 5:23 so likely could have run sub 2:30. Most of them could not have done it, including a few who played D1 in college- they were more sprinter-types. But the main thing is the mentality- of the 5 or 6 others who might have been physically able to do it, none of them wanted to train for track- even though many had done middle school track.

Fair enough, but the caveat I put in was that they were also either decent cross country runners or showed great conditioning in soccer... not all soccer girls are like that, but plenty are, especially midfielders. But, as you said, they have to want to do the extra training.

Believe it or not, ice hockey players are some of the most well conditioned, fastest kids too...

you can lead a horse to water but you can't make her drink.

you can not get girls to do anything, they have to want to do it.