Since your last posts of the youtube race, any adjustments? or just keeping on plan?
Had 2 rounds of 60s today, ran another PB of 7.06 in the first round with what I thought felt like a bit of a lazy run. Went into the second round hoping to go under 7 seconds but my start let me down, still managed to bring it down slightly to 7.02, so maybe next time.
I’ve not really had much chance to get any technical work done recently as I’ve been competing most weekends and our track has been shut because of snow for the last week!
The times do seem to be pretty close between me and your athlete, good to know I’m managing to keep the times fairly consistent across the distances.
And after yesterday I would certainly think twice about taking an inside lane for the 200 again. Even lane 2 would probably be pushing it, although luckily at the European Trials next month they don’t use the inside 2 lanes anyway so they clearly acknowledge that it’s not a good idea for higher level athletes to be running such a tight bend.
Just come back from the Birmingham Indoor Games, I entered in advance for the 60m yesterday and the 200m today, but as both events had heats, semi-finals and a final I decided that might be too much for one weekend so I skipped the 60m and decided to just concentrate on the 200m today.
The track at Birmingham has much better banked corners than the London one does so I was hoping for some better times at this one.
There were 10 heats, so the winner plus the next fastest 5 went through to the semi finals, I ran 21.67 from lane 4, coming first in my heat.
I then ran 21.45 from lane 6, winning my semi-final which I was pretty impressed with as it was only 0.06 slower than my outdoor PB.
I was pretty tired by the time it came to the final as I had to put more effort into my first heat than I planned because of the qualification rules. But despite that I finished 3rd running 21.65 from lane 4 again.
So all in all it was a good day and I came home with a bronze medal 
Fantastic! Continue updating us. You are starting to run some fast indoor times. Pretty soon sub 21 is coming!
Congrats, way to go almost equalizing your outdoor PB on an indoor track!
I’m impressed with your 60m progression too. Keep up the great work
That’s my hope, I’ve just got 200m at the European Trials next weekend and then that’s my indoor season finished. Then I just need to keep up the training and stay injury free and we’ll see what happens
I’d like to think with another competition or two that I could go under 7 seconds with the 60m, but I don’t want to do too much too soon. Getting that close to my outdoor PB is certainly promising though.
Also on the subject of the Birmingham Games, I’ve managed to track down some footage of all 3 of my races on Sunday. I’m just waiting for the full resolution copies to be emailed to me.
I had a quick look at the low quality versions, and you would not believe how slow I was getting out of the blocks on my fastest run! (21.45)
I’d love to play it through some video software and actually see how much time I lost!
Anyway, once I’ve got them I’ll stick them on YouTube and see what you guys think…
Actually I won’t keep you guys waiting, for now here is a link to the low quality version of the semi-final in question. It will be fairly obvious once the gun goes, but just so you know, I’m in lane 6.
http://www.athleticos.org/coverage/250427-2013-Birmingham-Indoor-Games/video/691176-SM-200m-SF3
Nice run.
Haha, nice start 
Looked as fast as swimmers…
Right well here is the full resolution video of my semi final with the incredibly slow start…
You’re doing good.
The ‘good’ start in the semi did cost you your PB.
Well done today
Well today has been another successful day, it was the UK Championships and European Trials at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield.
The race layout was 4 heats of 5, with the 4 winners plus 1 fastest loser to make a straight final of 5.
I won my heat in 21.62 (reaction time 0.249) from lane 5, which was on par with the times I ran last weekend, especially as my first run is never my fastest.
I was given lane 3 for the final which put me off a bit after running the inner lanes at London a few weeks ago, but I’d got too far to back down over a lane draw.
I crossed the line 4th in 21.62 (reaction time 0.239), an identical time to my first heat which wasn’t too bad considering I was 2 lanes further in, beaten by only 0.02 by the guy infront. However he was then DQ’d for a ‘lane infringement’ so I was given 3rd place and the bronze medal. He was actually the second person on the day to be DQ’d for apparently stepping on/over the line, I think the very close competition and slightly undulating track were catching people out unfortunately.
I really need to work on my starts/reaction times as 0.249 is just too slow for a sprint start, a lot of the guys in the 60m final yesterday were clocking around 0.150 off the blocks. And as reaction time is basically ‘free time’ off the race I really need to see if I can knock off that extra tenth of a second.
But considering I only did indoors this year as something to keep me going until outdoors started, I’m pretty pleased with how it’s gone.
And here’s the reward…
Thanks Nice to see all the hard work paying off.
Congrats mate - nice job with the bronze!
Got a picture from one of my races the other weekend, any comments on technique/form?
3rd at a senior national championship is superb - congratulations. I don’t think your current slow reaction times are necessarily a bad thing. If you fix them, you’ll be able to record faster times without actually having to run faster. In your 21.67 heat, you lost approx 6 frames (at 25/sec) to the guys inside you, which is about 0.24sec slower than them (not 0.24 RT). Do you currently have a coach? If so, I won’t ask or suggest ways of improving your RT.
Not on the picture, but I have a couple of comments on the video of the Birmingham final: I like what I see until you enter the 2nd curve. Your stride looks nice to me. As you go into the curve, your stride length decreases, as if the extra effort of making the turn through the bank doesn’t leave you with enough strength to keep going at the same pace. It’s very obvious from your knee & hip height that your stride length is lower (but this doesn’t meant that trying to keep it higher will help you - I think the decreased length is the result of something else and if you improve that then you’ll keep your stride length from decreasing the way it does). Possibly your specific endurance isn’t quite there due to it being early season right now, or possibly the banks cause you more problems than someone who runs more from their power. Speculating, I wonder if you’ll experience less of a slowdown when outdoor due to wider turns and no bank, but you might just be SE related.
Your 200m PB is way better than your 400m PB. How often do you run the 400m and have you ever run one while you were in 21.5 shape?
These are just ideas though - listen to yourself or your coach before you listen to me. Maybe someone else here will chime in on what I’ve said. I really miss it when Charlie would come along and tell me if I was right or now. 