Gotcha. Well, my big beef with long to short is that mechanics of the long races aren't the same as the mechanics of the 1&2. You aren't moving at the same velocities, which in turn, affects your gait and stride. I feel it's more beneficial to move at higher velocities early to allow you to observe form issues and have a longer time to work on them (there are other reasons for short to long, but we'll keep it brief for now).
Regardless, running 800m-3200m in one stretch seems pointless to me. Short distance sprinting (especially the 1 and most of the 2) is primarily anaerobic, so even your SE days for those would be maybe a 150-160 and 250-300, respectively (a little more leeway on the 200, though). Even if you ran the 4, you typically wouldn't run distances >600 for your SE days. And you would still be running those at a record mile or 3k pace. Granted, a mile isn't that much of an effector in the grand scheme of things, but from a performance standpoint, you don't want any more extra stress than is absolutely vital. And as far as endurance goes, you will get it through speed/special endurance runs as well as tempo training (if you know anything about Charlie Francis, he was a big advocate of tempo)
I know your coach wants you to go long to short, so there's not much you can do about it, but if you could convince him otherwise, I feel it might be the better approach.
As far as running goes, though, those hill sprints are a good idea from a technique standpoint. They force you to adopt a lower shin angle, so even if you pop your hips at the beginning, your mechanics won't be affected as much. Also, they limit your top speed, so even though it might be a high-intensity hill day, the overall intensity of training is still lower than a top end day on flat ground. You can also pull a sled if the weather prevents you from doing hills.
If you were to adopt short to long, the first few weeks of training would involve quite a few short hill sprints (10-20m repeats with semi-full recovery between runs) to emphasize the start before moving on to more acceleration and top speed work. As far as the athletes we work with (bobsled and skeleton), they have a similar profile to a 100 runner, so their top distance during speed work is 40-60m. The only time they would achieve 100+ would be on SE days, and 160m is pretty much the limit for total volume. It may sound crazy at the moment, but we've seen some amazing results with our athletes over the last 10 months.
Still, it's ultimately up to you. If your hands are tied, just try to control the volume the best you can to prevent too much fatigue from building up.
