I need a little information on the intracacies of racing 1600 meters. I’m interested in pacing strategies, maybe a little general guidelines on training, and the deviation in times between 800 meters and 1600 meters. I’m a JUCO cross country coach who has zero experience with track, and one of my signees this year is a decent track athlete but he’s having a ton of trouble pacing over 1600 meters. I watched him run today, and he had a big lead after 500 or 600 meters, then his form broke down spectacularly and he ended up finishing 4th in 5:00 (winner was about 4:38). He does this all the time – leads for the first 800 or so, then loses several places over the final two laps.
He hasn’t asked me for help; I would defer to his high school coach anyway. I’m just curious, and maybe a little nosey.
Haha he sounds like me! almost exactly like me. Kill it, then explode. This is honestly a better question for letsrun.com assorted values of the answers but eventually you’ll get what you seek.
If he’s an 800 guy, just have him sit in for the first 1400. If he’s still there with 200 to go he should do just fine. That will help him learn the flow of a 1600 (which in HS is usually an overly fast first 400, a slow middle 800, a big pickup at 400 to go, and the last 200 all out).
Unless he clearly better than the field, he should try to get to 1000 metres doing as little work as possible while maintaining contact with the leaders (just tuck in around third or forth - it should feel brisk and a fair bit of effort, but within oneself). Then, depending on his kick, he should be ready to go hard from 600 metres out (if he is a strength runner - which it does not sound like), but if he has a good kick should just keep covering moves until the last 100 or so when you blow it wide open.
If he is leading then dying, he needs lots more miles and fitness to hold his optimistic early pace. He should practice being tucked in and running a pace more suited to his ability. One should run the 1600/mile/1500 even, or negative, splits.
The 800 is pretty much the same, but don’t ever lead until the home stretch. And only go when you know you can sustain your kick, don’t make some weak move that instantly gets matched by the field.
does he train for the event specifically? if he was, for example, to run 12 x 400m with 1min rest (a pretty advanced workout that i wouldn’t start with right away), he’d have a pretty good idea what his pace might be (the pace at which he could run that workout).
If his form is breaking down at 500-600m, then it would seem he’s better suited to the 400.
This guy needs some schooling in pacing, and those other runners that he’s sprinting out in front of, then dying and losing to, are the ones he needs to follow and THEN see what he’s got in the last 300m. If he’s really got the talent, he’ll be right there at the line.
The 800 is basically a long sprint most of the time you will positive split an 800 but it can be great training in lactate tolerance for a fast mile.
as for the 16 or 15 usually it goes out hard with a good first lap and then it gentles down a bit and you have about 1.5 to 2 laps of solid pacing. At 5-600 to go that is when the race starts to heat up and build for a finish.
So in short I would work him on fast 400’s with short recoveries that he has to maintain the pace, ie 4 x 400 with 60 rest and 600’s with more rest but at faster speeds for lactate. and 200’s for kicking speed.
I’m not sure what his training is as far as specifics go, but I can tell you that he’s never done 12x400 with one minute rest. Nothing even close. The cross country and track programs in our area sorely lacking when it comes training. For example, the cross country team in my hometown, which competes in the highest classification in Georgia, runs 20 miles a week on a good week. The team’s long run is 5 or 6 miles. Some of the better teams in our area run more, but not by much. It makes it very difficult when athletes get to us in college, even at the JUCO level. They just can’t handle big miles for a while. It’s like they have to train in order to train in our program.
Now, that’s cross country, not track. But the the same principles apply with track. My observation from the sidelines watching my cross country signees compete in track during the spring season their senior years is that they 1) Don’t train enough; and 2) Pacing isn’t emphasized like it ought to be. I’m guessing my guy’s problem is a combination of lack of fitness and poor pacing strategies.
I don’t know what you can extrapolate from the following figures, but his 800 PR this year (which he ran in practice; he’s a 1600 and 3200 guy in races) is 2:14 (last year, he ran a 2:06 at the region finals). His 1600 PR, which he set a few weeks ago, is 4:56. 3200 is just a few ticks under 11:00 (I can’t remember exactly what it is). His 5K PR is 17:20.
Believe it of not, there is some good info in Once a Runner about how to run a 1600. But I’m not lending my copy out to anyone. Also http://www.sportsscientists.com/ has some good pacing info on their site.
But he needs to learn to realistically pace. If everyone is going out in :65 and he is a 5:00 dude he is going out too fast. Of course he is going to fade over the last km. The first lap needs to be run with his brain no one is a hero here, the next two laps he needs to just keep contact then somewhere around 550-350 to go, it’s going to get fast. If he is still in there then at the finish line he can have a chance.
He probably is a 4:50 dude right now, especially if he is going out in 2:10 or faster. but he doesn’t have the staying power to come back in 2;20-:25. he just needs to learn how to pace better and not run so damn fast in the first 400.
But as a 5:00 dude, he doesn’t need to be leading a 4;38 dude in the race. That’s quite a few notched down the totem pole in the track world.
What caliber are his teammates? Is there someone just a little faster than him that paces a little more evenly? Have him sit on that guys right shoulder until the gun lap. I do think with practice you can teach yourself proper pacing by running 400 repeats like Dan mentioned. For some it doesn’t come naturally. My senior year in HS we had some promising underclassmen that were clueless about pacing. Their PRs were all 20 sec slower than mine but they would go out in the first lap like they were on fire. Third dual meet of the season our coach ordered them to stay 10 meters behind me on the opening lap. They all fell back slightly from there on the next 2 laps. At the gun lap they were free to let it rip. Three of them set 10 sec PRs. We did similar things in practice to drill them into running even splits so they could finish the workout with little variation in lap times.
Buy, then read, then give him/his coach a copy of Daniels’ Running Formula. I’ve been re-reading it lately and there’s a lot of good stuff in there specific to his situation (and lots of good general stuff as well of course).
I used to go out in 68, 2:20, 3:32 and then see what I had left. It produced a 4:32 when I felt great and 4:50 when I fell apart. That got me 7th on my high school team 30 years ago. You have to be able to hold back and feel like the half mile is a fast jog. 2:20 was easy when I could do a 2:02 all out. We would do 3X1 mile repeats in 5:00 to 5:10 with a 2 min jogging break. We had one kid do 3X1 in 4:36 and then run 8 miles home. The coach said it was the best workout he had ever seen and he coached the 2 mile runner up to Salazar.
This is probably one of the prettiest races I’ve ever watched. Of course I’m biased it was by a former teammate. But we knew he was something special when as a freshmen he held with us through a 10 mile training run fresh off of football season. Met his grandfather who was a 4:10 miler back in the cinder track days. Had tons of stories about the AAU and all the guys I used to idolize. Was a really fun time for me. Anyways this kid ran with the big boys in meets and a lot of that was his grandfather’s teachings. He always used to tell me about how I was impatient and if I wasn’t winning the race was probably going downhill fast for me. Nailed it on the head. His grandson beat me Junior to Freshmen every single race that year. By a lot. But there was a good reason for that. Watch the video, it’s of the 2nd time he won state in the mile actually really awesome and I greatly admire the highlands ranches runner’s guts for that move. It’s intense. But the patience that he displays throughout that move is what I, and likely your athlete need to learn. He also went on the win the mile, 3200 and 800m the year before, and kept all those titles the next year. Totally a super talent but also a master of smart tactics.
It’s been fun, but it’s also been a challenge. Coaching wasn’t something I ever wanted to do, I didn’t really know how to develop the young runners I had. I took the information that you gave when we talked on the phone and built a progamme around our conversation. I’ve also used a lot of what BarryP has written over the years. It’s actually worked out well for our programme. Our entire conference has gotten stronger over the last few years. Our 2011 team would have won the conference title a few years ago; we placed third, just a few points out of second, this year. We’ve had several runners sign four-year scholarships, and we had a great recruiting class this year. It’s been one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done, but it’s also been on of the most challenging. It’s a tremendous amount of work and every day brings a new challenge.
We haven’t done any track meets; right now, my AD won’t let us do any spring meets because of budgetary concerns. I hope that we can do some meets next year; it would be a great way to keep my kids working and racing. With no track season, they tend to slack off during the spring. I have a few who are serious about their futures and they continue training and racing regularly during the spring. The rest of them – it’s just hard to get them out of that high school schedule they are used to. My biggest challenge has been getting them to understand that cross country is a year 'round sport, not something to do just three months out of the year.
But yeah, it’s been a lot of fun. Had two Academic All Americans this year as well as a couple of All Conference runners. Now, if the team could just get a decent coach, there’s no telling that they could do . . .