Have you ever run 800s? If you've competed in track and field there's a good chance you may have some experience with this distance. And therefore you know how awful this event can be. Why is it so awful? Well it's too long of a distance to sprint and not long of a distance to really pace yourself. It's basically 2 to 3 minutes of pure physical discomfort. And if you're into that sort of thing than you've found the perfect workout to inflict as much pain and discomfort as you can handle. But there are a few other reasons I like the 800s as a training distance as it provides valuable feedback as to what you should workout on to improve performance. Below are 4 Benefits of Running 800s. Benefit #1 - Measure of Overall SpeedThe nice thing about 800s is that you do two laps of a track oval to achieve this distance. And based on your time you get a bit of an idea of your overall speed. If you want to know how you compare to the world record you can do two laps and see how close to 1 minute 40 seconds which is the current world record. Are you within 30 seconds of the world record? 60 seconds? More? Test yourself and see how your overall speed ranks. Benefit #2 - Measure of Your PaceAs I mentioned at the beginning you can't sprint an 800 m nor can you pace yourself. And after running this distance a few times you'll quickly learn a bit about your pace. For example, let's say your total time was three minutes which is not too shabby. And your splits were 1 min 40 for the first lap and 1 min 20 for the second. Since most people tire in...