800m Training

This summer I would like to break 2:00 for the 800m run.  Having only run the event a handful of times, ever, I believe my personal best is 2:03.1.  I know I ran a few 4x800 splits faster than that but I don't know how fast.  Those times were all from high school.  I may have been able to run slightly faster in college but with less races, there was less time to expiriment with an event that I am not overly good at.  In addition, due to the volume of my overall running and lack of anything truly fast, I don't know if I would have gone much faster at all.

You may be thinking, why would he want to do this?  My reasons mostly come back to time and motivation.  In my mind, 6 x 150m, no matter how fast, is mentally much easier than 10 x 1k, especially alone.  Clearly it will also consume much less time.  Another reason I want to do this is that I was always envious of the guys with the natural leg speed that I lacked.  Plus, everybody knows that going fast is fun.

For now, I am just going to keep running as I have been until my April 27th 50k.  After that I will lightly jog for awhile and focus on recovering from that race and getting mentally ready to tackle this new type of training.  I haven't decided on an actual course of training yet, I am still doing my homework.  It will probably be a little higher mileage than most 800 training plans because I still want to be successful at trail races this summer and the SDSU Classic 8k in the fall.  I think for awhile I will plan to do weeks that include hills, fartlek, and a long run with strides after most easy runs.  I am also going to focus on the whole body with lots of cross training in the form of bouldering and mountain biking.