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My step son just finished his first year of track (he's a freshman in High School). He did quite well (best time was a 1:59:52 800m at districts). He'd like to do some training in the off season so he starts next year closet to 2 mins, he started at 2:12 this year. I wrestled in high school so the only training I did was just running for cardio and from what I've read so far there is a real science to this and each distance trains differently. I tried to look stuff up on the web but a lot was for college/professional runners who train non stop all day / all year. I'm looking for something to do this summer each week, whether it's 4 or 5 days and a simple 1 hour or so work out. If anyone has any suggestions it would be greatly appreciated. Remember, be gentle and go slow, I know very little about this sport. I did see an article on this site but it confused me. So if someone can explain how you do 5 sets of 4x200's decreasing the time by 1 sec that might be all I need.

Thanks in advance.

Ara

Glad to see interest from a parent. Every runner is unique, and has different capabilities and requirements when it comes to training. A little bit more information will help us find a good program for your step-son. For example:

Does he play other sports?
Would he want to train just over the summer, or a year-round program?
Does he have an athletic background, or was Track his first sport?
What are his (real or estimated) times for the 400m and the mile/1600m?

Thanks for the response.

He's a natural athlete (honestly he could play about any sport he wanted and be good at it). He's played basketball since he was in 3rd grade and he's very good at that. He plays in leagues (about 2 game per week) in the summer. He ran cross country last year but says he's not going to run this year (doesn't like the distance, but he could change his mind).

We're thinking of a program to do up until basketball starts, especially if he doesn't go out for cross country. He hasn't done anything for about 3 weeks now (intentional to let his legs recoup). We're going to start some light running this week and then start some harder workouts. I saw some on the web but since I'm learning this I'm always looking for more advice.

He ran the 400 around 52 secs this year. He says he ran a 5:13 1600 in cross country.

What I'm thinking is say a four day week workout in the summer and maybe pick it up to 5 to 6 when school starts if he doesn't go out for cross country.

Thanks again. Any help is appreciated.

5 sets of 4x200's decreasing the time by 1 sec that might be all I need.


Well, I'm not expert on the 800, but I can tell you what that workout jargon means. What's listed as 5 sets of 4x200's decreasing by 1 second is the main set, to be performed after an adequate warm up. After warming up, you would run 200 meter intervals 4 times. Usually, the recovery time is given, it's important to keep this consistent between intervals, say 30-60 seconds. Each 200 would need to be one second faster than the previous. This is also called running negative splits. After you ran the 4 200's, you would take an extended recovery, say 3 minutes, then you would repeat the same set of 200's. You would do this 5 times, for a total of 20 200's. So, for a random athlete, the workout may look like this:

Warm-up

Main Set:
200 (:35) recover 45 sec.
200 (:34) recover 45 sec.
200 (:33) recover 45 sec.
200 (:32) recover 45 sec.
recover 2:00

repeat x5

Warm-down

Also, in my experience, the first 200 of the second set would not always need to be faster than the last 200 of the first set, and so on. This also seems like a workout for around mid-season instead of pre-season, but again I am no 800 expert.