Recovery for intervals

How long do you recover between intervals of 400m, 800m, and a mile? And does having a shorter recovery hurt you more than help you?

my team does a 200m recovery for 200's, 400's, and 800's. my school coach doesn't know what he's doing though and i don't think he gives a long enough break for the 800's.

Depends on the goal of the workout.

Tempo: If you're doing say 5 x 1 mile at tempo pace, just to break the tempo workout up into more manageble chunks, rest should be 90s - 2 mins.

Vo2 Max Conventional wisdom says the rest should be roughly equal in time to what it took you to run the interval. Say you were doing 10 x 400 in 70s. Take 70s rest between each one.

Pure speed This would only really apply to 200m repeats, but you can take REALLY long (up to 5x the interval time) recovery.

Now there is a caveat to the vo2 max workouts. It takes 2-3 minutes to reach vo2 max, so if you're doing short repeats (400m - 800m)you need to shorten up the recovery a bit to spend more time at vo2 max.

If you shorten the recoveries, you won't be able to do as much volume at the pace you want to do. If they're too long however, you'll recover too much (this is especially true for tempo repeats) because lactate levels, HR etc will all fall too much.

I usually do an equal rest or sometimes a little more like 10 or 15 seconds more, no matter what I'm doing

Less is better for building endurance, and makes it close to simulating a race when you do it right.

If you looking to build speed take a long break inbetween sets but if your looking for endurance take short rests inbetween.

this is what i do
400s-2:30 break
800s-around 3 or 4 minute break
1600s- 5 or 6 minutes
idk for 200s b/c we like never do those

i think it just depends on how many you do