Feb 16, 2013
After the 8.07 on 1/31/13, we had a solid few weeks of practice. With him, I have always kept things simple in training. We do few drills, usually 1 drill for a given aspect we are focusing on. Right now, it’s been speed between hurdles. We did a lot of work with hurdles at 36" and 9 yard spacing (vs 39" and 10 yd spacing). Practice runs in hallways in running shoes have been around the 1.00-1.10 split range per hurdle. I’m trying to create training environment where he is put into goal racing rhthym (approx. 1.00 splits or faster) . We did one day about 4 reps of a 10 step run up to H1 to help increase speed throughout the run. This did work well for him.
On Feb 13, he raced again running 8.06 and I felt ran technically really poor. This came after 5 days off due to a college recruiting visit weekend going longer than expected. He then ran a 60 in a 7.14 and again, technically ran very poor from reaction to finish. Mentally, it was good for him. He had “been on top of the world” and finally ran poorly and got beat bad in the 60m.
A race on Feb 16 had 2 rounds, and I felt after such a poor showing Wednesday, that meet would help him prepare for his trip out to Seattle next weekend on Feb 24. I did not go with him to the race today (feb 16). I wanted to see how things would go without me and used this as a preparation for Seattle, when I will not be there again, and potentially NYC March 2-3.
He ran a prelim of 8.15. Later on I received a text he ran 7.76, which would put him #1 in the US right now. I had a few other messages and phone calls. It was eventually finalized that was indeed his time. After speaking to him on the phone, he said he felt good during warm-up and jogged his 8.15 prelim. I have felt he needed a prelim to run fast and most meets we do not get that luxury, nor room for a proper warm-up on the hurdles. My instructions to him last night was to attack H1 with more speed. I felt he was jogging it in the 8.0x races after analyzing the races on video. I’m hoping to get video from this race so have some idea what he did.
Overall, this nearly completes our goal of running 7.70 indoors. Technically we just finished SPP and now entering comp phase of 2-3 weeks. The plan is to race on weekends and do 1-2 easy technical sessions and some accel SE work out to 60m with limited accel zones. Hopefully he can arrange time with me for 1-2 massages weekly as well.