Workout 5x200m + 3x200m, 3min rest b/first five & 5min rest b/second five w/15min break b/sets … goal time 27-28 first five, 25-26 last three

Will – 26.7/26.8/26.4/26.8/27.3, 25.1/25.8/25.4

Averages – 26.8 first five, 25.4 last three, 26.2 overall

This workout is a little faster than I need him to be running right now, but as I already discussed a little with Chris Puppione, I wanted to get through a couple weeks and get a feel for him at a variety of speeds to see where he is at. Between now and Thanksgiving he’ll probably hit more speed than he needs to, but then we will have essentially the entire month of December where we will not be hitting nearly this fast this much. But it has shown me a lot about him, already, with the two workouts we did this week. Despite asking him daily, he’s still showing absolutely no signs of tightness/soreness/etc. from the 600-200 + 6x200m workout we did on Thursday. Yesterday’s 200m hills were done in about 55-60s going up and 2-2:30 coming down (20min of hill running). Today during the last three he didn’t really show any signs of tightening up during any of them. The only real noticeable thing was that it seemed to take him about 50m to get going on the first two. So I told him for the last one to focus on getting out more aggressively right from the beginning rather than building into it. He did, and even though he looked slightly tighter coming home the last 20-30m he still ran faster than the one prior.

I’ll be comparing him to Brandon Lopez a lot, because I see a lot of similarities between the two, from their build, their smoothness in stride, and their event areas (loving the 800m, but probably should gear at the mile ultimately). One thing Brandon seemed to be able to do was raise his levels of lactate really high; there would be a few workouts (i.e. the 600m nearly all out, walkback 100m in 3min, 300m all out) where as soon as he was finished he would be literally comatose for about 20min, and even getting him to do 3 strides on the turf after that break took a lot of coaxing. I know I haven’t quite had a workout of that level yet with Will (we will be doing that 600-300m test before Thanksgiving), but to date he appears to not have his lactate levels come up as high. Had Brandon done today’s workout, I feel like he probably would have taken more time to convince him to start his cooldown jog, whereas Will finished, took about 30seconds of hands on his knees, then was walking back to his bag immediately… as if he knew we had another set or something.

Will’s a true soph, so I definitely have time with him to try to build his confidence to becoming a great miler. He’s got big goals down the road, and he’s been terrific about doing all the work I’ve asked of him (lots of gen strength, drills, etc.), so he’s on board. And as we get into the racing season, more of his workouts will probably be centered around 60-pace work for speed endurance/efficiency than hitting the 800m paces since he’ll be racing mostly at that distance. And I’m hoping to get to a point with the workouts where I’ll just be able to build enough confidence to get him to the line in the 1500m… and I’ll give him a race plan that can exact a good time out of him without him thinking about the end result.

Workout 2x(7x100m) w/50m walkback b/reps & 20min b/sets … goal pace sub 13/100m

Eric – 12.6/12.4/12.6/13.0/12.9/12.2/11.9, 12.7/12.5/12.6/13.0/12.8/12.0/11.6

Marcell – 12.6/12.4/12.6/13.0/12.9/12.2/11.9, 12.7/12.5/12.6/13.0/12.8/12.0/11.6

Devon – 12.6/12.4/12.6/13.0/12.9/12.2/11.9, 20.0/18.8/17.7

*Devon did one set of 7x100m, then did 3x150m @80-85-90%

Averages

Eric/Marcell – 12.5/12.4, 12.4 … first set took 9:00 to complete, second set 8:40

Devon – 12.5 … 18.8 for the 150m’s (12.5/100m)

These guys all looked real good doing this workout. I had Devon only do one set and finish with three progressively faster 150m’s because during most of his workouts he has started to look fatigued and like he’s struggling a little more in the final stages. Since his hamstring has been acting up each time as well, I didn’t want to put him into a fatigued state and still be asking him to run really fast. So the 150m’s seemed like a good compromise, because he still got 450m of running in (instead of 700m), and it averaged at the same velocity. I think the little extra rest and little less volume kept him from getting to the fatigued point that causes his hamstring to have issues, because he looked smooth ‘til the end and no complaints about the hammy.

I took heart rates after 15mins of rest and Eric was at 90, Marcell was at 102, and Devon was at 150. I should’ve had Eric/Marcell going again by then (they recovered quicker than I thought they would), but they had been mostly inactive during that break so I told them to be stretching/moving around for a few mins before starting the next set. Next time we’ll probably go on 15min break not 22min. Devon’s HR was a bit higher partly because he was more active during the break, doing drills and stretches and moving around. Still, I knew he was working harder during, and his HR shouldn’t be staying up at 150 just doing drills, so I gave him a few more mins before starting his 150m’s.

I also took HR’s at the end of the second set of 100m’s for Eric and Marcell. Eric’s HR was at 162 and Marcell’s was at 180. That was a little surprising to me because even though Marcell was probably finishing slightly ahead on each one, he definitely looked as though he was working a lot easier than Eric. My initial assumption is that Eric just can’t get his HR up as highly as Marcell can. I don’t know if there’s any correlation, but Eric seems to have a more even keel demeanor than Marcell does.

Overall it was good to see both Eric/Marcell go a little faster during the second set (just slightly)… but it was even more exciting that their overall time for the set was 20sec faster. Since their times were basically the same for the sprints, it just means their rest was shorter. And albeit not by much, it was still about 4% less break for them each time.