Curious as to what your longest workout of the week looks like. Our head coach won’t let our guys run any further than 80 meters as their absolute longest continuous run because they think the only thing that matters is pure speed. Between the warmup, workout and “cool down” they are getting in about 2 miles a week.
I know overall mileage has to be low but 2 miles a week for 400 and 800 runners feels awfully low.
What do you guys think?
I'm not a coach but I am capable of observing workouts. When I was in college at the beginning of the decade I had several teammates under 1:50, the fastest being 1:44 in the 800. And a few 45 second 400 guys.
The 800 guys would have their longest run of about a 4 mile temp, giving it a true tempo effort of about 5:20's per mile when they could certainly race a 4 miler at 5 flat pace. Their longest track workouts would be repeat 1k's, or occasionally intervals as long as 1200 meters early in the year. They would do 5-8 of these reps around 3 minutes for a kilometer with a fair amount of rest.
The 400 meter guys didn't do any tempos, but they'd do some longer progression reps of 500 or even 800 meters, picking up the speed as they go. Or they'd run some repeat 300's at a prescribed pace with significant rest, not all out but certainly faster than their 800 meter pace would be. A 500 meter time trial in practice was common for the 400 meter group at early in the season, but after about a month of practice or so.
The biggest distinction between 400/800 guys and distance guys is how much they lift. They were in the weight room twice per week and putting up some serious weight for track athletes. None of them could run good 1500's though, one of the 1:48 guys ran a 3:52 1500, the 1:44 guy ran a 3:45 or so. So their training didn't help too much for endurance, it was very focused on 400 and 800 meters speed, probably because of the amount of muscle mass.
80 meters as the longest single effort and 2 miles/week is lunacy for a runner focusing on racing 800 m.
Keep out of reach wrote:
80 meters as the longest single effort and 2 miles/week is lunacy for a runner focusing on racing 800 m.
Some are doing the 100, 200, 400 and 4x4 while the others are doing 200, 400, 800 and 4x4. So there are no 800 specialists to be fair.
A 100-200 meter competitors training is going to look different than a 200-400 schedule. A 400-800 schedule will look even more different And my 800-1500 runners different, etc...
My 100-200 runners will rarely if ever do 2 moles of work on any day.
To clarify you said per week. Yes, that seems low for anyone running a 400.
I never looked at sprint training in terms of mileage volume but , yes, that’s low
otter wrote:
A 100-200 meter competitors training is going to look different than a 200-400 schedule. A 400-800 schedule will look even more different And my 800-1500 runners different, etc...
My 100-200 runners will rarely if ever do 2 moles of work on any day.
If you have time to let me know, what are the basic workouts those different groups do?
Bored in class, please help!
2 miles a week is crazy for an 800m runner, and is honestly pretty low for a lot of 400 runners as well. Having a 400/800 guy running a tempo or cruise interests of sorts is not going to make them slower.
Looks like today is our long day. We’ll be doing a total of 1000 meters, 200 of which will be their “warmup”. 800 total in the main set broken up into 10-15 intervals depending on if they are “middle distance” or “sprinters”. Look for big results from us this season!!!!