This morning I was on the stadium stairs at 6:45 am. I did some fast stair sprints and plyos and came home to crash on my patio. After giving my last final exam - which means my academic year is officially finished(!) - I went to the track for some fast sprints. I did a warm up, a fast 300m and 3 x 100 from blocks at 95%. I finished with a negative split 400m at 80% effort.
Here it was.
Morning:
500m warmup, stretches, drills
10 stair sprints - fast
5 plyo double leg bleacher hops half / sprint halfEvening:
600m warmup on grass, stretches, drills
Saucony spikes on
300m - 41.5 (13, 14, 14)
3 x 100m from blocks - 13, 12.75, 12.5
400m - 63 (32/31)
The way I did the 100s from blocks was to set the interval timer beeps for 10sec (take your marks), 2 sec (set), 13 sec (GO!) and I beat the 13 sec beep twice. It felt good but I didn't want to press my luck. These sprints were at 95% or close to full-out. I ran them on the straight right on the white line so as to work on my in-line form. I finished with a negative split 400m at 80%.What's next
Tomorrow will be my last workout this week before I travel. I'll probably go in the morning. I have a junk meet in the morning before I travel on Sat. I've been thinking about skipping the 400m and trying an all-out effort in the 800m. I know I can break 2:20 with a good effort. Depends on time, I have a plane to catch. Or I could be a masochist and do both back to back... but the 800m would be just a cool down jog. Nah, probably not both. I need practice with starts - the 100 and 200. I've run plenty of 400s this season.
Equipment woes
I've been breaking sprint shoe risers and so I again contacted Nike about getting more. I tried 3 ways, on-line chat, call, and email. I am not optimistic... based on my phone and chat contacts. Nike said they will not sell replacement risers and won't reveal the name of the company that makes them. They are probably made in some sweat shop in China so I see why they won't tell me how to get them. My only source for these (a large reatiler) has dried up, but I have enough for this season ... and maybe then some, but, a limited supply so I need to find a harder coating to preserve these accessories before they're gone. Seems like these could be made on a lathe out of hardwood. My best pair of R3s are ripping at the eyelets, so my backup pair is now my #1 pair.
Bill - you say in a previous report time to run shorter, faster. I would like to clarify suggestions I previously made. As you know, I encouraged you to shorten the distances and pick up the speed - but that was in the context of peaking for your big event. (penn relay's) You were doing repeats of long sprints - built a good foundation of speed endurance - but as the meet approaches you can significantly reduce the intense longer efforts and focus on shorter, faster. If not too much time passes you maintain the fitness element from the long sprints and get a boost from the relative rest and refinement of very high speed running. Now that you big event is over, the suggestion is downtime, foundation work, and build back up for peak performance. How you structure that depends entirely on your goals, but if your goal remains 400 meters, then a signficant portion of the foundation work has to be endurance related. So at this point I think it is hard to say know where short sprints would fit in. But I am speaking mainly from the energy mechanism standpoint: I understand there are technical form (starts, etc) points you need to refine as well.
ReplyDeleteI think your case is a bit difficult: you are running both long sprint and short sprint events. How to balance preperation for both without negatively impacting the other? Focusing on the longer sprint still provided good short sprint results. Seemed to work pretty good.
One other point: don't overlook sports psychology. Much is written about mental makeup of athletes and response to both good and bad results. A typical response to a good result/exciting meet is even greater obsessiveness - with the excitement\endorphine response the athlete comes home, re analyzes, ups the training\adds new things, or doesn't take some down time, thinking more is better. Recall last year when you had a good meet but strained your groin, came back all pumped up and then aggravated it in training. Very common.
Great season so far, I'm looking forward following your journey onward!
Joe