30+ year old looking for speed work for 800m, 11 km per day 5 days a week. 13 x 800m per day = 10.4km. Not aiming at the Olympics,

Would you like to give an example of what you would deem appropriate and not so rediculious.

Well if he just wants to run under 2min for 800m, then 50km/h is more than enough if the right sessions are done each week. I’ve run 1:55 and 3:55 with my biggest week being 65km during the winter (average about 55km) and around 50km per week during the summer! Renshaw is another who does well under 100km weeks and has performed rather well over 800m doing this in past years! Of course he has a lot of natural talent and not everyone will be a 1:45 runner, but 2:00 is a bit of that!

Why must 800m runners do so many km’s anyway? I know the 800m is a bit different to the 400m, but how many km’s per week would an elite 400m sprinter do?

It aint that low I agree.

I think there is a law of diminishing returns up to a point - for low mileage runners(Kaan, Renshaw & Rowe)

After that an athlete in order to gain more endurance/mileage must change their whole program Eg: longer runs on Wed and Sun, recovery jogs etc..

My view / dilemma right now - is that during this process you must sacrifice fitness in order to build up you Wed, Sun runs and cut back your intensity of your speed sessions.

Thoughts?

Sure,SWJ.
Firstly,I did not see where Sac said he was "looking for speed work" in his original query?
The whole idea of defining Kms/week requires stating the place of a given week in the training cycle and hence the purpose of the defined kms/week.This can range right across the whole aerobic/anaerobic spectrum over a training/racing period.
Given the time of the year of the post,I took it that Sac's query related to a predominantly aerobic development phase of training aimed at next seasons racing season.In that case,even allowing for his modest 800m aim(based on his previous 400m/1500m times)a minimum of 80-100kms per week would be my "not so ridiculous"aim for him.
The 800m is still heavily dependent on the level of your aerobic development as even the Renshaws of this world eventually discover.Such low levels of kms as mentioned by Sac do not develop it enough.
As a personal anecdote,I ran 1.57 from a 400m pb of 57s and 1500m pb of 4.15, at that time, on predominantly aerobic training of 90-110kms/week for road racing.Based on that and other athlete coaching experiences I would advise a minimum of 80-100 Kms/week(suitably arranged as per Lydiard principles) for the aerobic development training period of any serious runner,which I credit Sac with being.This serves to give a base to allow specific 800m training to commence,when of course kms/week would substantially drop towards the specific race period(s).

I guess I took offence with the "Give us a break" and "Get real". Way to go, put them down it works everytime.

The comment "not much speed" helped me jump to conclusions. I will also assume you were not a World Champ. Some may say average for the miles you pushed out.

Ok. Now we're getting somewhere! Thanks for your thoughts Biesty.

Your mention of training cycle is noted and yes - summer is over and aerobic development is the focus for the coming months.

Don't know about some of you but for a low mileage / speed athlete this requires "restraint". By this I mean - the other night we did some km reps at AT pace and then some 300m to finish at AT. On the last of the km reps I just wanted to rip through it after coasting the first 3 - I restrained. In the 300's I couldn't help myself and went 95% on the 300's. The following day was a little fatigued - dumb move.

You should feel a little tired the next day after a session such as that, if not then you haven trained hard enough, but the next day would probably be a recovery day anyway of 1 or perhaps 2 easy runs.

That’s what training is all about, pushing yourself one day and then having 1 or 2 easy days following that before your next session.
And then within a 3 to 4 week period some people have 2 to 3 hard or “big� weeks followed by an easier week. I never do this on purpose, but I generally race a XC or road race about ever 3 weeks during the winter so I do a small tapper for them the week before, so I guess these are my easier weeks.

(55 sec 400m) (1500m 4.10). quite a few 800m runners/coaches could not do these times. If concentrating on aerobic development I don't see the sense of flattening oneself so early, plenty of time for that later.