

Treasure in Clay
RE: 3200m strategy?

dam son wrote:

What's a good strategy for a 3200m/2 mile? There's so many laps its a little harder to make a good strategy compared to the mile.

In the mile I do the best when I relax the first lap and try not to go out too fast, maintain the 2nd lap, surge hard the 3rd lap, and kick it home the 4th lap.

Should I just do something similar for the 3200 but every 800 instead of every 400?

I'm trying to run somewhere in the 11:10ish range if that's important

It's probably best to find someone who is slightly better than you or of the same ability. Stick close to that guy the entire race unless he is the type that likes to take off too fast.

In a longer race you can "build it up," by starting slow and passing runners in a gradual fashion all the way to the finish. In high school almost all the runners will start too fast, so this will work well. Run even time. 5:30-5:30 = 11:00.

In the 2 mile the running really does not start until 3 laps to go, however it is possible to get caught going too slow at the beginning. This never happened to me though!!! However I can probably name 100s of times when going out hurt me.

As a coach I found race strategy hard to teach. You will have to experiment somewhat. Some coaches will be very opposed to what I have said and believe that faster times will result from starting fast. Perhaps you are among the very, very rare people this will be true of.

