400/800 fitness?

I have a base of 20 miles a week btw

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This is very tough to predict an 800m ability off of. You could be anywhere from 2:10-2:30 shape lol. How hard did it feel? Your volume is 20 mpw, which isn't very much but it's something at least. If I had to throw something out I'd say 2:15-2:20 but I could be way off base still

Idk, 64/2:20 maybe? It’s a wild guess because 100s don’t tell you much. Not saying it’s a bad workout, but not a predictive one.

aadcax wrote:

This is very tough to predict an 800m ability off of. You could be anywhere from 2:10-2:30 shape lol. How hard did it feel? Your volume is 20 mpw, which isn't very much but it's something at least. If I had to throw something out I'd say 2:15-2:20 but I could be way off base still

After realising I am not that great at longer distances (only slightly sub 21 minute 5k PR after 18 months of consistent training and yes, I am a girl) and realising I am more fast twitch orientated I have recently moved down in distance and as a result I have found that I seem to respond much better to 800 training than I ever did with 5k training. I still have yet to figur out whether I am more of the 400/800 type or the 800/1600 type.

Doing these reps, first couple felt easy, the 3rd and 4th reps were when it started to get harder but the level of difficulty from that point onwards felt about the same throughout the workout up until the last two reps which felt hard, I was sweating a decent amount. It was almost full out, I may have been good for 2 or 3 more but my form would have been horrible.

The reason I tried this workout is actually because I read about one of my favorite soccer players (Kelley O’Hara) doing 12 x 100m in 16s or better with 40s rest and wanted to see if I could do it. Obviously I am not as fit as a professional soccer player so I modified my rest to be 60s instead.

My PRs from Feb were 1:13 and 2:43 so I’m hoping I’ve been able to shave some seconds off since then. I am definitely more fast twitch, ran a mile TT the other day and got 5:51.

Short reps with long recoveries are the worst predictor of race fitness. Long reps with short recoveries are the best predictors. That's because a race is a long rep with 0 recovery. Do a workout of 200s or 300s with short rest and you will have a much better indication.

At the very least I can say you're due for a PR in both the 400/800m. For someone of your speed/endurance profile, a 5:51 is going to translate to much faster than 2:43. The reason I say this is because a year or so ago I was in about 5:50 1600m shape, maybe a tad quicker and ran an 800m in 2:29. If you pace the race well, I definitely see 2:30 in you at the least. Do some longer rep workouts (200m-300m) with either short rest (1-2 min) or even longer reps (like a ladder workout of 500,400,300,200 with longer recovery of 4-5) and a 600m followed by some 200's at 800m effort.) A few weeks of these workouts while touching on speed through shorter reps like 100's/150s while maintaining some decent aerobic volume should see your time drop quite a bit. I say all the above because your speed and speed endurance are in pretty good shape for someone running 2:4x in the 800m, they're more consistent with a 2:20 and below 800m runner. Keep running and training and your times will drop.

It's funny because the whole time I was doing 5k training, my side goal was to break 6 in the mile (well, technically I time trialed 1600) and no matter what, I couldn’t get close and would end up racing 6 teens but within just 10 weeks of 800m training, feel like I could PR in every distance from 100m to Half Marathon (I’m not joking!). I have literally cut my mileage in half and I seem to be getting twice the benefit.

I will say, I do 3 quality workouts each week. This includes a tempo run (3 miles at 6:50 or 6 miles at 7:20), some 300s/400s at either 800 or mile pace and maybe one pue speed workout or hill repeats. The rest of the days I just easy jog between 8:30 and 9:00 pace for about 30 minutes, I consider them active recovery days.

I must admit, when I do actually do 400m repeats a couple of times a month I do still find it quite hard to run under 80 seconds during those repeats, if I run a 400 in 80 flat then I will almost always need about 3 to 5 minutes to recover. I guess I could do anywhere between 3 and 5 reps at this pace before I would start to slow a lot. It seems the shorter the distance the better I am, it would not surprise me if I was more of a natural 60m/100m runner but I don’t think I would enjoy the training very much for being a PURE PURE sprinter, I am actually really enjoying training for the long sprints and middle distance.

It is impossible to say because this workout doesn’t tell us much, you do have the potential to run a lot faster than 5:50 with your speed, I think with a few years of training you could go sub 5 and not many girls can do that. Based on that mile time and the fact that 1:20 laps still don’t feel great I would say your 800m may even be 2:30 or over. Speed endurance is your weakness, you are able to find it easy to run fast for 10 to 20 second bursts but unable to keep that together for the length required to run a fast 800m. I agee that you are a lot more fast twitch and speed at short bursts is your strength, so the 15 second sprints feel easy to you and you are able to recover quickly from them but try hitting those same paces for 25 seconds per rep and I guarentee you will find it much, much harder to bust out endless reps. 300m reps at 800m goal pace with 2min rest or maybe 2 x 1000 at just under 800m pace with 10 minutes rest are some workouts that will help. You should be good for 65s in a 400m with decent pacing.

UPDATE.

I tried this workout today: 12 x 200m with 3 min walking rest

Averaged 37 seconds.

I was going hard.

Generating the speed was my main setback, it would have been easier for me to run 3-5 more at 37 than it would have been to run even one more under 35.

Was the 3 minute rest too much?

Age and weight ?

18 and 5’4/110lbs ?