Amongst the collection of fantastic runners I’m working with, we have four (sort of five) focused on 800m. An M40 we can get to 1:55, two SMs at 1:54/52, and a JM closing in on 1:49.

Through knowledge acquisition, advancements in understanding the event, and, if I’m honest, what’s fashionable (whether we like it or not, athletes buy into that bit). The training I’m putting out to these guys is significantly different to what I did when I focused on the event. A bit of that explains why I wasn’t as fast as I should have been.

The guys are doing a lot less running than I did, through autumn and winter they’re at around 45–50km per week, across 6–7 running sessions, making up the better quality sessions most weeks there’s a VO2 session and we’ll alternate hill repeats or longer threshold intervals for the other session. During this period, there will be two gym sessions, which I did not do back in the day. The first of these is focused on strength and core. Through the autumn/winter, the guys will move from reps lifting 60% of max through about 80%. The second session is a low-impact plyometric session largely focused on in-line jump variations and box work; again, I never went near this stuff, my loss.

As we transition from winter to spring, where we are now really, we start to progress the better quality run sessions and by the time we hit May a typical week will have three better run sessions – a complex 800m race set focused on H+ overload, a 1,500/800m session, and a 400 or hill session. Occasionally, we’ll replace the 1,500/800m session with a VO2 workout to top up the O2 tanks. The guys at this time are doing about 32–40km per week in total.

During this period, we also migrate the type of gym work, they are up to three sessions a week. One strength session focused on lifting at 90%+ of max, so a power-based session, perhaps only 3–4 reps per set. We have a dedicated core session at this point, Swiss ball and Bosu balance ball exercises working through the frontal plane and posterior chain. The third session is a more complex hybrid strength/plyometric set. A small number of things are important here: single-leg isolation, an expansive range of movement, and postural integrity. I never went anywhere near this stuff, my loss (again).

There it is, a short collection of thoughts on how we’re preparing for 800m racing. I hope those of you into this stuff liked it, and those that aren’t at least found it interesting.