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.

April 8th-14th Training Recap- Getting Back on The Horse

April 8th- Didn't run as it was a travel day.  Danielle and I ventured West to do research for her internship project.

April 9th- Got in 4 miles.  The sinus headache is really the only thing left over from last week's illness but it is limiting.  It just increases the longer I run.

April 10th- Didn't run, no time!

April 11th- Got in a solid 6 with Alex.  It was easily under 7 minutes per mile which is fairly decent for us at this altitude.  We usually like to run pretty slow.

April 12th- Ran 6 miles after work at a decent pace.  Did 2 strides after.  Wanted to do 4 but I was just really not used to anything fast so those were hard enough.  I need to do more of those!

April 13th- Ran 4 miles in the morning and felt sluggish and tired.

April 14th- Was extremely pleased today.  Danielle dropped Alex and I off in the country so we could have a crosswind run instead of into the wind loop (no good roads to run with the wind).  We took off and it got faster and faster.  I figured it would be an unsustainable pace for that distance since I've had a pathetic past few weeks of running but I kept it up and felt good doing it.  We averaged about 6:32 for 13 miles.

33 miles total for the week, not enough considering I will be running 31+ in one run in 13 days.  Oh well, I'm excited!