400m 1st or 100m 1st

pierrejean · March 5, 2009, 9:03am

How much of a benefit is there to running a 400 prior to a 200m? Over the years i’ve noticed a pattern of athletes(at least mine) running pr’s or near pr’s after running a 400m earlier in the day. But that is rarely ever the case for 100m athletes.

As an example, we’ve seen athletes pull out of the 100 or 200 in order to focus on one or the other. And we’ve seen 100/200 doublers seemingly have a little trouble coming back to do the 200m after running rounds of the 100. Since there are very few(very few)200/400 doubles at major championships, we don’t really have a good frame of reference.

Michael Johnson, Marie Jose Perec, Cathy Freeman come to mind right away.

Some of the suggestions for this have been pretty simple. I’ve been told that it’s a simple matter of being warmed up. Which obviously makes sense. But I think it’s a little more going on than simply warming up. I’m sure 3-4 rounds of the 400m prior to the 200m did a little more than warm MJ & Perec up. I think there may be a little more going on physiological than that, but i’m no expert in that area. Just the ladies;)

Seeing as how the 100 & 400m affect the body in different ways(fatigue)would the 100m leave you with “less” going into a 200 than a 400m? Is there a physical adaptation that takes place after running the 400m whether a single race or rounds, prior to running a 200m that leads to an actual benefit in running the 200m.

Perec used to open her season at 200m or occasionally at 100m, and would step up to 400m later, for a limited number of races during the season. This was also Koch strategy obviously. They were doing short to long in their training plans. As for Atlanta, Perec wrote in her latest book that she was about to quit before the 200m quarters because she was dead tired. She ran 22.07 in semis and 22.12 in final, while she was probably in 21.8 form.

Its not just the lactic acid production, its also the length of that warm up race (3/4 of the competition race for GDR), as well as rhe intensity of that first race and the time between the two races. Watch also for the athletes usual work capacity and time of the year.