8020 for Middle Distance

Hey Andrew and Charles 🙂 Thanks for the replies! The Run Faster and Stride Academy plans look great for what they are, but still aren’t in the ballpark of what I need/want. The Run Faster plans don’t look like they target the training distances needed for 800 meters or the mile (100-400 meter repeats for example), and the Stride Academy definitely doesn’t, though I have already added in running drills and I will be adding in plyometrics along with continued focused strength training. Those are big components, but I still need to the targeted workouts for the specific race distances.

ShoeCue seems intriguing and I’ll have to give that a try sometime!

I’m taking the 8020 coaching certification course, and I’m feeling fluent enough that I can hack together speed workouts for 2 days a week and keep the foundation and endurance runs the same, maintaining 8020 balance. But of course, I’d love for the team to create a few plans for middle distance one day 🙂

Interesting data note: My fastest 800 and mile recorded was last August during an all-out mile test. Since then I’ve repeatedly set PRs for everything from 5k-10k, in races and workouts (the latter is a standout point here). I’ve only raced 5ks, aside from my only ever half-marathon in October. For 5k, 5 mile, and 10k, in TP it’s a continual upward trajectory of data points. I haven’t had a single point of data for mile or 800 since last August, even though I obviously know I would beat my time easily, which I’ll test later this month.

But point is that the 8020 workouts don’t ever target these in workouts, otherwise I definitely would have beaten my times from last summer, even more so because I’m stronger the shorter the distance goes. So, I both need targeted workout and to start at least TT these periodically for myself.

That being said, training at 8020 5k plans has been essential and really the very best for me as I have as strong foundation, especially doing things that are my kryponite like tempo runs 😛 I’m ready to now go in and kick some butt in my strong areas.

Anyways, guess I’ll experiment and report back! 🙂

Oh yeah, found Colorado Track Club last month in doing some research, great nerdy stuff on there!

I’m with you on the individual workouts and getting them into a workable plan. One big difference it doesn’t make much sense to program them is as a structured workout because the GPS won’t be accurate tracking 100, 200, 400 meters. I definitely like going on auto-pilot and having my watch trigger me. But I think with how recovery is integrated, which can often just literally be resting still or walking, I think they’ll be enough space to hit the lap button, but I’ll need to take a piece of paper with me.

Easy thing for this is that 8020 team considers a full section of intervals to be in the 20% category, including any recovery/rests. So I think it’ll be easy to calculate, but definitely takes a little more effort than the using the plans out of the gate.

Coaching course has definitely been insightful and helpful for me as an athlete, let alone helping others. Giving it an easy 5/5 stars so far 🙂

@maddenap ah, thanks for the idea! I’ve been having a lot of fun with ChatGPT, and I find it pretty useful for things I have experience with already, but wanting to bat around some ideas, or synthesize some info. I’m definitely going to feed it some info specifically for the speed days for 800 meter training, see what it spits out.

Congrats on almost being done with the certification! I’ve been moving along slowly, but super looking forward to getting some friends to volunteer 🙂

Gave it it go with a pretty specific prompt:

“I want you to provide me with a 9 week endurance training plan for racing 800 meters. I will be training 5 days/week. However, I only need you to give my workouts for 2 days out of the 5. The 2 days should be speed workouts. The other 3 days I will do easy endurance runs, and I already have those workouts. Also, keep in mind that I am 45 years old, but I am also an experienced runner.”

Basically, I just want some ideas for the speed workouts, and I’ve read a bunch on 800 meter workouts plus did them in HS, so wanted to see how it responded to that.

Sample of a few weeks it gave me for just the speed workouts:

Week 1
Day 1: 6×200 meters at 800m goal pace with 200m jog recovery
Day 3: 3×400 meters at slightly slower than 800m goal pace with 400m jog recovery

Week 2
Day 1: 6×200 meters at 800m goal pace with 150m jog recovery
Day 3: 4×400 meters at slightly slower than 800m goal pace with 400m jog recovery

So, yeah, ballpark for sure. I followed up and asked why it didn’t give any 100m repeats in the plan, to test it, gave a decent answer:

“The reason I didn’t include 100-meter repeats in the plan is that the focus was primarily on developing endurance and race-specific speed for the 800-meter distance. However, incorporating 100-meter repeats can be beneficial for improving your speed and stride efficiency, which can also be helpful for your overall performance in the 800-meter race.”

Then gave me a few example workouts to swap.

In the end, not going to use it, and no competition having a coach create a plan is a million times better right now, but I imagine if I fed it a lot of specific starting info from good resources and asked it to crunch the data, it might spit out something decent.

But 800 meters feels like it really needs to be tailored to the athlete. Googling for plans gives few options, mainly the results focus on types of workouts, different strategies to training. Too many variables for stock plans probably, though I think the 8020 team would knock it out of the park with some different level options.

Decided I’m going to use 8020 plans for my base, and then swap out a few days for some structured 800 meter workouts from some other TP plan sources, match me where I’m currently at. Bit of a jigsaw puzzle, but going to see if I can put it together lol.

Thanks Charles! Yeah, Stryd is at the top of my wish list, hoping to get one relatively soon, think it will be super helpful for this training.

@Matt Fitzgerald awesome! infinitely better 🙂 Going to email you now.