Wednesday, May 16, 2012

500s

A little warm tonight, about 75º at the Dean Hayes track at sunset.

Did a good foundation work with slightly shorter distance and a little more speed.
600m warmup on grass, dynamic stretches, drills
Saucony spikes on
5 x 500m - 82.5, 83, 86, 83, 88
5-7 min rest
After workout weight down to 141.2.

The first four were about 0.5 sec slower (83.625) than my than my fastest set of  4 x 500m  ... but I threw in an extra.   I set a goal of 82: 32/34/16  for  200/200/100.

Recovery and heart rate
I took pretty long recovery but not 'full' recovery.   What is "full recovery"?  I assume that means when the heart rate comes within maybe 20 bpm of normal resting heart rate?  My resting heart rate is about 64 right now.   5 min after my 4th 500m, my heart rate was still over 120 bpm.   I've found that if I start a long sprint interval of more than 300m at a heart rate of over 120, I die and lose form.  I usually wait til my heart rate is at or below 120 when I start another rep.  For 300s, and 200s... not so necessary.  When running 500s, I can float the first 200m in 32 sec without much effort.  But the effort increases massively by the 300 mark.   I asked coach Page about this and his answer was basically, rest interval depends on how much pain one can tolerate, not so much on heart rate.

Weights
I'm going to put more emphasis on weights for the next month or so.  I want to do weights 3x a week in addition to my resistance bands.  I thought about getting a weight vest for stadium stair runs.  I just have to be careful about lifting with the legs.   It puts unfamiliar stresses on my joints and I need to keep stress off my knees.   There is an excellent glute machine and I really want to focus on that, quads and hip flexors, and adductors.

Track and Field
Looking at the elite sprinters like Bolt and Yohan Blake, those guys appear to have spent lots of time in the weight room.  I am really impressed with Blake.  Prediction: I think Blake will challenge Bolt in the 200m and maybe even the 100m.   Blake has the second fastest 100m in the world this year (9.84) and is the second fastest 200m sprinter of all time (19.26).  He is almost 4 years younger than Bolt and may still be getting faster.  Bolt will be 26 in Aug.  Blake, age 22, has those huge glutes and hams, along with a pretty amazing upper body.  Be interesting to see what he'll do.   Also, Justin Gatlin looks great at age 30 ...running a 9.87, beating Asafa Powell by .01 a few weeks ago.   Some great elite meets coming up this summer, including the Olympics.  The Jamaican 4x100 team looks awesome and maybe we'll see them be the first to break 37 sec.  When Jamaica set the 4x100 world record in Daegu last year (when the US team's Doc Patton went flying on his back just before handing off to Walter Dix), Bolt ran an amazing 9 flat anchor leg.


1 comment:

  1. Hey, I'm misquoted! What I said was heart rate should not be used to define rest intervals. It is too complex to explain in few short sentences, but you have to look at the cellular level at the energy mechanisms engaged at each pace/distance, and degree of CP (creative phosphate) restoration (avaialbe in literature). Then, you have to decide what energy mechanism you are trying to develop (cannot develop all with one type of work out) and build your interval program from that. The comment about tolerate was taking out of context. Degree of tolerance is a factor that should be considered but no workout should be set at tolerance limits (or at least rarely)

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