Sport Today

I've gotten advice here before, so hopefully you can come through for me
again.

Any good workouts for the last week or two before league and districts?
I've been working on speed drills to drop my times and help my kick.

Current 1600m pr is 4:38 and 3200 is 10:40.

Email or post ideas,

Thanks

mark

Nothing hard in the last week!

Some fast but relaxed 100-200s might help, but DO NOT overtrain!

  Close to times a couple of guys on our team had (stick on a 2:03 800
prior to conference and you're almost dead on one of them.  He finished
at district with a 1:58.5, iirc).  

  As I recall it, two weeks before held the last hard sessions, brutal
things like partner 200's (start and finish on the middle of the straight,
jog across field to tag tag from your partner who was doing the same
thing in alternation with you).  A fair number of 100m strides.  Aside
from the one day of 200's, though, not much high stress speedwork.
I think a day at brisk pace, say 4 miles at 7:00 or so for folks like
me (11:56 3200) and faster for the faster group (most of the team :-)  

  The week before conference was amazingly light, no speed, no long
runs.  A few 100m strides, say 10, on a couple of the days.  And
basically just moderate distance and pace runs to keep the legs turning
over.  

  Basically, now that you're in the last two weeks, you're already
physically trained.  All that remains is A) avoid injury! (we lost a
guy, 9:51 3200 in the indoor season, 4:32 1600 early in outdoor, to
an injury about 3 weeks before conference as he decided to overtrain)
B) whatever mental tune-ups will be helpful.

  Never underestimate the mental side -- we talked a lot about 'mental
toughness' in racing.  It is there, and presumably with your times
you're looking at winning conference or at least placing high, and then
advancing and doing well at the next level.  This is a good time to
think about your strategy (which may just be 'go run hard', whatever
it is for you), and to visualize the races in some detail -- just how
your legs are going to feel, who is going to be near you at what
points as you run _your_ race, and the like.  

--
Robert Grumbine http://www.radix.net/~bobg/ Science faqs and amateur activities notes and links.
Sagredo (Galileo Galilei) "You present these recondite matters with too much
evidence and ease; this great facility makes them less appreciated than they
would be had they been presented in a more abstruse manner." Two New Sciences

I've had good very good results following the tapering method that Seb Coe used
going into 1984 Olympics (1500m gold medal), which can be found in "Better
Training For Distance Runners," p.376.  The main idea is to do your last hard
aerobic session about 10 days from your peak race, cut your mileage by 50-85%
(Steve Ovett ran 100mpw in base periods but only 15mpw in peak competition) and
do most of your mileage as intervals at race pace with relaxed recovery.  Coe
ran these at 800 pace (his first Olympic heat) which would be about 51-52
sec/400.

7/23/84.  Here are the following sessions:

7/24/84 30 min easy

7/26 30 min easy
7/27 6 X 300 38/39s, 3 min rest
7/28 off
7/29 400/600/400/300/200 in 55/82/53/36/25, shorter recoveries
7/30 6X300 38/39 2 min recovery
8/01 a.m. 4 in easy; p.m. 10X200 27s, 2 min recovery
8/02 3 X 400 52/51/52
8/03 rest
8/04 oly 800 heat #1

Lyndon

"Speed kills ... it kills anyone who doesn't have it!" -Brooks Johnson

If your meet is on Fri.  your last hard workout should be Tues.  I would
suggest a good warmup; a few 100m strides; then
1 X 600 pretty much all-out(probably coming through 400 around 62); about a
5 minute jog; then about 4-5 X 200 starting at around 32 and working down to
28 or 29--all with a 200 m jog recovery.  That should do it.

At this point, with only two weeks left, no single workout will help you
to run faster. In fact the danger at this point is to try and do too much,
and the overtraining will only hurt your performance. If you are a miler
running 4:38.

You got two weeks left, and two races.

You should not do more than 2 interval sessions per  week, and they should
not
be real ***es-

e.g. for you no more than 4-8 x 400m in :65 - :70

I would not run any interval longer than 400m,
you could add something like 4-6 x 200m in :32-:35 to stay sharp.

let me know how it goes...

bw