Xavier Carter may have something to say about that. 6’3" over 200lbs and running world class times as a college freshman. The guy is an animal. Ran in the 45’s one week after the football season!
I fear that the X-man will be only a pointy ball player when all is said and done.
LSU is unique though in that their football coaches respect track + field give the athletes some practice flexibility. Bennie Brazil has never been asked to do the full spring practice routine.
-AC
P.J. or anyone else
Just would like clarification on this sentance. Do you mean:
a) the quicker your 200m P.B. the generally less endurant you are?
or
b) the quicker you are at the 200m split relative to your PB (speed reserve) the harder it is to maintain this speed over the next 200m?
Sorry, just a little confused. Thanks, TC
Sadly you’re probably right. He’s already pretty big for the times he is running (few 200+lb sprinters out there) and will get bigger as time goes (M. Bennett?). The kid was running sub 48 in middle school, simply unreal. Tripled 1-2-4 at FL states 2 years in a row.
Both!
a) There are sprinters with 200/400 type, and sprinters with 400/800 type. It’s evident that the first group has less endurance than the second one.
b) the smaller than SR, the harder will be the last part of the race.
Generally speaking, at top level 200/400m types have a bigger SR during 400m races than 400/800m types. You can’t ask a 200/400m type to produce a small SR and run with almost even pace! Also, the last 100m times during 400m are not really correlated with the 800m personal best. A 400/800m type is not necessary the fastest in the last straigth. The last straight time is correlated with SR.
I know this is moving outside the field a bit but while I was debating this with a fellow coach (who believes even pacing all the way around – e.g. each 100m should be exactly the same for an ideal 400m) he brought up the following argument:
Seb Coe could run 400m in 45/46 seconds. Nobody ever questioned why he did
not go through 400 in 48 seconds when trying to run fast 800s – it just makes sense. Why do you question MJ?
Since I had not thought this through I just said I would investigate rather than give some half baked excuse. Any takers for this question?
Cheers, TC
B) Is very close to how MJ views the “Sprint type” 400m runner. He feels that an “800 type” 400m guy needs to go out much closer to his PB and try to hang on for the second part of the race relying on their endurance, whilst the sprint type needs to hold more in reserve and work the second half of the race (particularly the 3rd 100). The idea behind this is that both types of athlete will distribute their energies more evenly.
How does an Alberto Juantorena figure into this discussion? He was a horse “el caballo” of a runner. And if my memory serves me correct, his training (from what I read) was more distance oriented for a 400/800 meter runner. Did he need the higher volume of work to keep his bodyweight down (relatively speaking)?
Seb Coe’s WR splits:
200 m: 24.6 sec
400 m: 49.9 sec (2nd 200 m: 25.3 sec)
600 m: 75.0 sec (3rd 200 m: 25.1 sec, intermediate 400 m: 50.4 sec)
800 m: 101.73 (4th 200 m: 26.73, 2nd 400 m: 51.8 sec).
Hope this is of some help!
Chalk another one up for Baylor and, presumably, Clyde Hart in Darold Williamson, he of the 44.27sec NCAA semi.
Anyone know what he runs for 200m and/or 600m?
Darold Williamson has a 200 PB of 20.91 back in 2001… This year he ran 200m once, 21.27 (w+0.3) on 16 April (on 2 April took part to a 400m in 46.01 and on 23 April 45.06).
No other personal bests are listed.
His intermediate times during 44.27 were 21.4 and 32.2 according Gary Hill (Track and Field News). Williamson talks about 43sec in final!
PierreJean you beat me to it on Darold’s pb’s and splits from the semis.
With Williamson you never really know. By all rights he should have been on the Oly team last year, but he sometimes runs stupid races at in-opportune times.
As fast as those splits seem, he looked very controlled. Some of the old coaches that I was sitting with were VERY impressed.
It should be noted that Darold only ran one 200m race this year, and that Baylor didn’t even contest the 4x100r which is very rare for a US university.
Also contrast Williamson with Mark Teter who ran 46.0 as a high schooler in 2003 and now can’t break 47.0. One size does not fit all in terms of training.
-AC
This point is not made aware enough. A number of athletes have succumbed to poor performances due to coach-program-athlete mismatches. However, today it is better - information exchange, parameterization skills, etc.
Question from a sprint coach I relayed this arguement to:
Seb Coe could run 400m in 45/46 seconds. Nobody ever questioned why he did
not go through 400 in 48 seconds when trying to run fast 800s – it just makes sense. So why the need to question MJ?
Anyone (PJ, KitKat) have a counter arguement for this?
OK, I’ll be the bunny then :rolleyes:
And I will reply somewhat obtusely…please excuse:
I remember when the Russian jumps head coach Igor Ter Ovanesyan (spell?) was allegedly (in a report) critical of Carl Lewis, saying that with Carl’s ability he should be clearing 30ft in the long jump.
The thing is that while that may have been true, Lewis was the greatest long jump competitor ever, so he and his coach, Tom Tellez, presumably did an absolutely magnificent job.
So it is tempting to declare that anyone “critical” - even constructively - of a great champion should just pull his head in.
Then again, Mike Powell holds the long jump world record !
And some men were declared heratics for defying the Vatican’s official line that the Earth was the centre of the universe and that the Sun rotated around us.
My point is that questioning should not be discouraged because sometimes you get a better answer.
If the standard “cushion” for the opening 200m split of a 400m race is 1sec reserve on the athlete’s current 200m PB, then it seems plausible that Michael Johnson - in his 19.32sec 200m WR form - might have been able to go through halfway of a 400m in 20.3sec and finish just as strongly as he ever does. Then, even with the standard 2sec differential between first and second 200m, it is theoretically possible MJ might have run 42.6sec for 400m.
But there is theory and there is reality.
I think that someday physiologists will be able to tell us the ideal pace at which each individual dare to split through their 400m races. Until then, I will continue to speculate that there is a certain velocity and duration beyond which the lactic acid is released and we have to do our best to cautiously build a race plan around that.
Most men shooting for 44sec have targetted 21.2sec for the opening 200m. Michael sometimes went through slower than that and still ran 43!
Looking back on some of his races, I remember seeing the splits and noting he wasn’t going much faster in the last 50m than the other medallists.
He did the damage through the third 100m. That is also where most other 400m runners make their biggest move. It was just a case of him using his great speed-endurance - and speed superiority - in one part of the race rather than earlier. Some might speculate that MJ always ran a conservative race - both in terms of tactics and fuel.
So did Coe in his 800s. But whereas other 800m runners have had just as much 400m ability (or better, eg: Juantorena), Coe also had tremendous strength which he displayed over 1500m, with two Olympic gold medals.
But no-one has ever come to the men’s 400m with such overwhelming 200m superiority as Michael Johnson.
Some of us will forever wonder where a slight change in training and tactics might have led him. Maybe he would have run slower :eek: .
Maybe he would have been the first man under 43sec. We’ll never know now. kk 
tc0710 :
Sebastian coe wasn’t that fast at 400m compared to the other members of all-time top 10 800m team. Some of these 800m specialists had 400m relay legs at sub46sec like Coe (Cruz, Koskei, Gray), Borzakovkiy even under 45sec, Bucher and Rodal did low 46 in 400m competitions, Kipketer was obviously able to run 45.x by 1997. So Coe wasn’t the fastest 800m runner at 400m, unlike MJ who had about a full second over the rest of the 400m all-time top 10. The comparison between MJ and Coe doesn’t stand.
Looking at 400m splits for the AT top 10, we see that Coe was not too fast not too slow, just in the same range as others, who had about the same 400m basic speed.
1:41.11 = 49.3 + 51.8 Wilson Kipketer Köln’97
1:41.73 = 49.9 + 51.8 Sebastian Coe Firenze’81
1:41.77 = 49.8 + 52.0 Joaquim Cruz Köln’84
1:42.28 = 50.0 + 52.3 Sammy Koskei Köln’84
1:42.34 = 49.4 + 52.9 Winfried Bungei Rieti’02
1:42.47 = 50.9 + 51.5 Yuriy Borzakovskiy Bruxelles’01
1:42.55 = 49.4 + 53.2 André Bucher Zürich’01
1:42.58 = 50.0 + 52.6 Vebjorn Rodal Atlanta’96
1:42.60 = 50.5 + 52.1 Johnny Gray Koblenz’85
1:42.62 = 49.5 + 53.1 Patrick Ndururi Zürich’97
Also, Coe tried many paces during his career:
As for Coe,
1:41.73 = 49.9 + 51.8 Firenze’81
1:42.33 = 50.6 + 51.7 Oslo’79
1:43.07 = 49.8 + 53.3 Köln’85
1:43.38 = ? Bern’89
1:43.64 = 51.3 + 52.4 Los Angeles’84
1:43.80 = 51.3 + 52.5 Oslo’83
1:43.84 = ? Oslo’84
1:43.93 = ? Koblenz’88
1:43.97 = 51.0 + 53.0 London’78
1:44.0h = 53.1 + 50.9 London’85
Unlike MJ who never tried under 21.2 at half way (at least in his best years) We can say that he wasn’t someone who explored all the way possible.
If you take Reynolds in 1988, we see that he tried different ways:
Zürich 21.4 32.2 43.29
Indianapolis 21.2 32.0 43.93
Seoul 21.7 32.6 43.93
Zürich was not too fast, not too slow, just the perfect pace for him at this exact moment.
On the women’s 400, Koch and Kratochvilova tried slow pace, hard pace, etc. They were real explorators at 400, and i like crazy people, who go on virgin lands. Take the Czech. In 1982-1983 years, she passed at half way such paces as 22.7, 24.4 and 23.1. The first 2 halves gave final times of 48.86 and 48.82 respectively. Guess what, 23.1 led to 47.99… Just like for Reynolds, middle way was the good one.
On the other hand, at 800m she is still world record holder with 1:53.28 but never tried a pace faster than 56.1! and she had a 47.99 PB! What if she had tried a 54-55 pace like tried Mutola and Quirot, we will never know. She used mostly even pace at 800.
Guess this proves why Seb Coe was an 800/1500 guy.
We can see why MJ was a 200/400 runner. We can see good 200 times for Reynolds etc. Although they may not have raced 200 too often their times were pretty quick !
I would be interested to see 800 times for MJ, Butch etc ! I think that would prove the 400/800 double is now extinct. You are either 200/400 or 800/1500.
Juantorena was a long time ago, Borzakovski seems the only one anywhere near it now.