800 stamina problems

Question
My son (age 17)  had mono six months ago. Under doctor's care, and was cleared for running a month after he developed the mono.  Overall health seems fine.
Son lifted weights and ran through the winter months in preparation for track season. Runs the 800m single/relay. Track conditioning and practice underway for a month now, and son finds he has stamina problems.
He is disappointed with his running results this track season.  Finds that he runs out of stamina before the race is over, no kick at the end.  He has difficulty getting up on his toes through the race, finds himself pumping harder with his arms and his breathing is out of sync.  His run times are significantly slower than previous years.  He says his legs don't hurt, but he cannot get them moving fast enough.  
We would appreciate any advice you might have.


Answer
Well, from my coaching experience, the stamina will come.  Within a month of true track practices & some competitions, the athlete shouldn't expect to run as well as they did at the end of the previous season.  There are just too many factors that can affect their performance, which will tend to drop.  The initial performances of the season may be near last season's, if the athlete spent time in training throughout the entire lapse of post-season to current season.  You mentioned he had mono, so this will affect his recovery abilities for some time.  I don't know what he did for running or additional training after he got doctor clearance to be active again, other than you mentioned that he lifted weights and ran.  How much, how often, those bits of information are needed to make a better estimate at what could be the main issue here.  If he did a lot of long distance stuff at slower paces, and expects to run faster, this just isn't going to happen.  Also, the 'up on his toes' and 'driving his arms' stuff are actually moot points in running faster.  In my experience & discoveries on speed training, all the arm action & control of body movements does little to make an athlete run faster.  It comes down to 2 things:  force production, and conditioning of the right energy systems.  If his strength hasn't improved, he can't produce more force to propel faster.  If he's spent most of his training in an aerobic state, that is, long & slow runs, the 800m race demands a lot of energy from the anaerobic energy system.  So, if the anaerobic system isn't running efficiently, or hasn't been trained enough or correctly, the 800m performance isn't going to get any better.  If he wants to get faster, his coach will have to start training him in shorter distances, such as 100-400m, at race paces or faster, in order to get him to run faster in the 800m race.  I used to coach 800m, 1 mile, and 2 mile runners on the track team, and we'd focus a lot of our speed efforts in the 200 to 400m repeats and trials ranges at race paces or faster.  Over time, we'd see ourselves running faster or more consistently in the season.  I'd do little work on arm actions and all that stuff, once I realized what it takes to make an athlete go faster.  Arm positioning and all that technical stuff isn't as important as it seems.  A great resource for this type of revolutionary information is at www.bearpowered.com.  There is a great program sold on that site which explains why all the arm-action and technique drills don't hold true to their promise on making an athlete run any faster.  It comes down to a basic, yet focused strength training regime for a specific goal of increasing mass-specific force, or MSF. Also, their speed sessions are also held in relatively unconventional ways, but I applied their principles to my long distance runners and discovered them to work superbly compared to my other previous methods.  You can also read the forums on there to discover what others have done with the program & protocol.

I hope this answers most of your questions, or at least gives you a new direction to go.

Rick Karboviak