Deciding what distance to run?

Question

I know I've asked this a lot, but I'm trying to make a decision.

There's a track meet coming up on May 20th for the whole county. It's not very competitive, since the national mile times for this contest (Hershey Track and Field) are only 5 minutes or so for my division. I will be competing against people up to a year older than me.

On the same day, I'm competing against the top 5 13-year-old girls in my school for the mile. This is in the morning. The track meet starts at 5:30 and goes to 8:30.

I'm doing the mile run and the standing long jump. There's one more event that I could do:

100 meter dash

200 meter dash

800 meter run

I don't really fancy myself as a sprinter, but I've been complimented when I was just running up the street to catch my friend.

My coach says that I shouldn't do the 800 because

1. I'm already running the mile twice that day,

and

2. I could experiment with short distance (200) and just see how I do.

Answer 1

Do the 200. I think you could run this one really well.

Answer 2

Your morning mile will be a good warmup for the  evening 800. Don't waste your time in the sprints, and the potential for injury is really greater there. If you are running a 3:05 half, your distance potential is pretty strong. Hate to go against your coach's advice, but there plenty of old wive's tales linger about distance running. A total accumulation of 2.5 miles in a day is not a problem.

Before I ran my ran my best mile, I put in at least four miles warmup (that was in college, though, so it doesn't apply as much to you, but a PE mile hours and hours before is not going be a problem. People don't warm up nearly enough).