I am by no means one of the distinguished posters here, but I did run the 800m from 10th grade through age 24 and finished up at 1:46. My training partners went 1:44, 1:44, and 1:43 so I was the poke of the group. I was lucky to be coached after college by the absolute best middle distance in the country in my opinion, who I will leave anonymous here. Some basic thoughts....



All of this is within the context that a basic regimin of strength training, with a mileage load (I worked up to 80 miles per week until the sharpening phase), working endurance muscle fibers with a long slow run per week (I topped out at 16 miles runs each Sunday), Aerobic threshold training including a 4-6 mile tempo run on a weekly basis, Lactate threshold training each week for 80% of the time until the sharpening phase -- 5-6x 800m or 1000m cutting down with 400m jog was the basics of what I did. In the endurance phase (fall) I might do 5x mile, by March 5x 800m finishing last interval at a pace to starts getting close to speed (ie if you are going to run 1:50 800m you might run 5x 800 in march in 2:16, 2:12, 2:08, 2:04, 2:00 running the 400m in less than 2min in between).



Power

You must have enough power to get around the track fast...this is one muscle system that you have to focus on and carve out some energy/training time so that your schedule is specific unlike distance racers (anything above mile). Short fairly steep hills (18-30 seconds), run with significant rest in the fall on a weekly basis at max effort. This should not be a lactic acid workout but a fast twitch muscle fiber workout in the contexts of a dynamic effort. I also had some luck weightlifting with "cleans" -- you need some instruction on how to do these but they are a power lift for the legs that includes explosive power--I was not a fan of squats since it is done slower.



Seb Coe and El G (as well as Webb) were fanatical about circuit training and dynamic exercises (bounding, hops, standing vertical jumps, etc) that I think do the same thing. I really made a huge jump between 11th and 12th grade because I played Basketball in the winter and went from touching the rim to dunking in 3 months...my 800m fell 5 seconds that year to 1:51 which I attribute to that dynamic power training. I did not do these later in my career but looking back it probably would have helped.



Speed Drills

definately helped... more on this later--done religiously through the year. also including something fast throughout the year --200s or 300s once a week to work just the top end of speed. 150s doing sprint float sprint also....One of my training partners would get injured every year in the fall until he started adding in more pure speed in small doses each week -- it kept his calves loose and he was able to make it through the year healthy...



Sharpening Phase

Here is the key....speed endurance training for the 800m is the key to putting all the ingredience you worked on through the year together.



Have to run now, I will put more on this later but shoot me some questions so I can fill in the blanks