A lack of Hills with Nice grass is the advantage.
The other advantage is time between doing a sled pull followed by a Flat run - you might do the sled to Prime you so to speak, and followed by a Flat run. Hard to do if the Hills available are too far from the Flat surface.
Depends on the Focus on the day.
Looks kinda thick, I’m thinking two plates.
Clearly two plates on the side view. About 50lbs. including the sled.
I remember a discussion with at least PJ, Charlie and me, where PJ mentioned his athletes not wanting to run hills without adequate warmup facility.
I happen to have the near perfect situation for either. I live literally down the hill from one of the top high school track/xc programs in the USA. There is a rekortan outdoor track within about 30 meters of a steep hill somewhere around a 40 degree angle. It is paved but perfectly flat.
There are two grass areas available. One is field turf, which I know Charlie is not in favor of. There other is at the top of the hill and maybe another 50 meters away. It is large enough to run 300s and such on the grass just like the Jamaicans, but the grass is cut higher than shown in the Jamaican photos.
So, I think I prefer to stick with 10X40m up the steep hill, which is one of the MVP workouts.
At this point, I don’t see a reason to not do 10X40 twice a week and 300-450 twice a week for GPP.
Not thrilled about the injury risk of doing that every week, and I suspect Charlie wouldn’t be either.
I feel the hills are easier overall, then the sled. I tried the GPP hill workout for sled and just about killed the kids for a few weeks. I felt that half the hill volume was adequate for the sled.
Half of what volume?
Gpp hill 10x10 10x20 10x30
Most people do half - 5x10 5x20 5x30
With the sled - 3x10 3x20 3x30??
Nice facilities 
How close is your gym/weights area?
With the sled…highest volume reached for my group was like
2x5x20 +1x5x30…
1.5 mi or 2 km
I don’t have access to the high school weights which are nowhere close to what 24 hour fitness has.
Lance Bauman seems to be doing 4X10 + 4X20 + 4X30, which is less volume and with world class people.
Anybody have any thoughts about the wisdom (injury risk) of doing this with 50 pounds on the sled?
Why was Charlie not a big fan of field turf?
I don’t remember him ever saying that. I remember him saying ASTROturf but not field turf.
I thought CF’s issue with turf was more related to tempo work-preferred grass.
This is the thoughest week, with sneakers…with no other speed work that day,
it will quickly regress to 2x (2+2) x 20 and 1x (2+2) x 30m with spikes on, to 1 month with just 2-4 reps of 20m preceding actual acceleration work.
I emphasized sled work to work on some minor adjustments on accelelration technique.
My top male is in the 10 "40 area.
He didnt like the way it absorbed and gave off force, almost like you had to wait for it to rebound…somthing along those lines
Make your calves tight.
Exactly. Charlie didn’t like the surface and the effect of running on that surface.
And the way I see it, those comments apply just as much to pulling sleds as they do to tempo or strength endurance. Doesn’t matter much to me, because the local places that have field turf aren’t going to let me pull a sled with 50 pounds on it on their football field anyway.
Have you experienced this?
I have not and I have to run on field turf probably 5 days out of the week in winter.
Yes, in both of my calves…