400m S-L questions

John · July 19, 2009, 2:23pm

Yes, 300s or 320s are good indicators of your place on the way to a 400 season BUT if this is a young beginner, 200s early might be a better indicator because they’d prob only have the capacity to do a few 300s before the 400 and the target is moving so rapidly that early 300s would be too far away from what they’d be capabl;e of later.
the most blatent example of my coaching career was Charmaine Crooks who showed good 200m potential but ran only 59.5 (HS junior) in the 400 in early May. By July the same year, she ran 53.11 and won the National Seniors, almost entirely off 200s in competition and SE, the high school competition season with 3 or 4 400s, and just a few 300s shortly before her final taper. You could never have predicted that from a 300m test done indoors in Jan/Feb.

what sort of / distance SE were you doing?