This session was done by a junior on our women’s side with PRs of 2:10/4:38 and a recent 18:10 on a cross country course two weeks prior.

This workout came in the brief gap between our winter cross country season and the start of outdoor. Our 800/1500m runners were a pivotal part of scoring group in cross and were coming off of a long season of 5k training.

We lead off with 6x100m to get some time running around goal 800m pace without adding a ton of fatigue. This is an idea taken from Fast 8 Track Club who do a great job posting workouts for their elite men. The 60s recovery is plenty to keep the workout from getting too anaerobic, but still gives us a change to familiarize ourselves with 800m pace again early in the season. 

The 5x800m segment was the meat and potatoes of the workout. With the pandemic, we have essentially been training for cross country from May to February (10 months). Starting around 5k pace and cutting down let us start in an area we felt comfortable, but allowed us to slowly step down into more anaerobic work without leaving the endurance component behind. By the last rep or two we expect to see more lactate than our typical 5k workouts and help us build up better buffering capacity that we’ll need in the shorter track events.

Finally, we have one 400m rep done at goal mile pace. We put a longer recovery going into this and ultimately used closer to 5 minutes than 4. Our goal was simple, run this with good form at goal pace and with some fatigue already in our legs. Most of our workouts with 1500m pace recently were 200-300m. Having one rep is mentally easier for athletes to get their heads around. 400m after a solid workout was a good confidence boost for them to know they can handle a solid chunk of their race distance at the end of a hard session.