I guess I haven’t posted here in quite a while. I was off pretending to be a competent sprint coach for a couple years.
Anyway, I do enjoy a good 800 meter training discussion!
To answer the question about races at primary race distance. In the case of the 800, I would say in the 6-10 range at least. Many US collegians don’t run the distance enough and then have troubles when it comes to championship meets with rounds in them. Most hs kids are busy running too many races per meet and rarely, if ever really hit peak form.
I’m looking at the training week in the last post and I think that is a week than 99% of athletes would break down from doing. 30’s? really?
The thing that we should keep in mind is the best plans are those which include a coach and athlete who realize that the plan has to be flexible and also includes stimulus and recovery, stimulus and recovery, over and over in the correct amounts. Those amounts may or may not have a linear line of improvement and that is where a coach can sometimes help by taking that plan and adjusting it as needed.
Keep the discussion rolling folks!
This is what I’ve been doing KW. It’s amazing what you figure out on your own as you go along through trial an error. It’s also amazing at how ALL events have an overlap to some degree.
Right now my 800m runners are still strength training with about 50% less total mileage than they had during cross. They’re at roughly 10-15 total miles per week (depending on the athlete), with two days spent running their mileage (3-5 miles per), one day for intervals (200m progressing to 350m-400m over an 8 week span), one day for some fartleks or something similar, one for tempo work (1000m progressing to 1500m over an 8 week span), and another for core training, etc.