400m help!

[Charlie_Francis]

@jdobos

We finished up the first session without any problems today. My daughter brought a teammate to run with, who is also a 400m girl. Both agreed, that this was the first practice since the season started, that felt like a real workout. Both finished the session pretty easily though, and finished all eight a little better than their projected times. They both said the last two were a little tough, but not terrible.

The surface is decent, but the track is only 160m, so the curves are pretty tight. We begin on the straight and end on the straight. That way their only running two curves.

They told me that this was only the third running workout that they have done since winter break. The other two workouts were the two indoor meets that they competed in. The coach has a pool workout scheduled for Thursday, so we scheduled another tempo workout for Thursday evening.

There happened to be a former female 400m hurdler from Purdue at the track, that was holding a hurdle session for some middle school athletes. She said that when she trained at Purdue she would run a 5K prior to every workout. That sounds like a lot of mileage to me, but she said she ran the 400hurdles in 58.3 and her best 400m open was a 53. She also ran the 800m in her senior year of college. I guess I can’t argue with success. Has anyone ever heard of putting that many miles in before a workout? She said the 5K was an easy jog though.

Any suggestions besides repeating the 8x200 w/2m rest?

Thanks,

j

j

You can check out the GPP download from the site store. It has the big circuit detailed, which is a tougher tempo circuit and you can see it done there. Keep in mind that this is a girl who was running 52.8 going into that season, although she came here running not much faster than your girl.
You’ll also see hill workouts which you might incorporate as well. If at all possible, do the tempo outside to prevent problems associated with tight indoor turns. Let us know what the pool workout consists of. That might be a good thing but we’ll know soon enough.
We sometimes did longer runs at the beginning of the warm-up for the 400m girls at the highest levels of fitness- 49.91 to 51.08 (3:21:21 for Silver at LA84) in the fall but for a time not a distance- usually 15min but rarely 20min and not really with a set distance in mind (and only on grass!).