Okay so you have noticed now what are you going to do about it? There might not be much " to do" right now. But keep a close eye on that , ask the questions about how she is doing and feeling. How she answers , what she says are both clues to what is really going on.
Does she nap more than one hour at a time? I know that over hour naps are usually a sign of lack of sleep.
All you are trying to do is learn as much about how she is doing and make sure she is not doing too much work. Over work is so common and once you are overworked it’s very hard to do less as it does not feel right.
Don’t be afraid to take a day off sometimes especially after something great in a workout or session or a meet.
I am curious what happens to her sleep if ? or when she has 2 full days off?
May 1st 1995
felt very stiff, great pump in the muscle, therefor charlie had me do 10’s only ( I loved running speed workouts above anything)
- 1.04
- 1.02
- 1.01
- 1.01
break
- .97
- .98
- 1.02
- He had me try a 20 meter but we missed the time and it must not have been good or we would have progressed to longer distances.
break
- 1.00
- .98
- .90
12…92 - .98
- .89
- .91
- .90
- .89
- 90
( I would have done a slow and easy walk back and repeated these until completion. The volume of speed is about 2 x 100 meters and you get to count the acceleration so in some ways it’s more taxing for me than my 100 meter flat out because my 100 meter time was never very good. We used to break down speed often as I had trouble with speed endurance of all kinds. I was fast but I had trouble staying fast for a long time. My best running was indoors as there were less variables such as wind and that extra 40 meters!)
Next day May 2nd 1995
Went to Rosedale Park ( near my house).
It was mild and / little cool.
Did warm up
drills
very easy 10 x 100 meters tempo recovery runs
Hi Angela,
Thanks for posting these times from your notes. I have several quick questions.
-
Were these marks hand-timed with a stopwatch?
-
What type of fly-in did you use? Was it an easy buildup or was it a powerful acceleration?
-
Regarding the 20 m, do you recall the go/no-go intervention time?
Best,
Christopher
====================================================
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Yes Christopher the times I have posted are all hand times with a timex iron man watch Charlie and I both used for 25 years. He used his iron man / Timex watch long before meeting me pre 1988 for the same purpose. Charlie never used a stop watch. Timex has it’s own stop watch function.
-
a) 100 percent of the time we used a falling , crouch start = you stand at the line, both knees are bent with your lead leg ahead, arms are both bent touching your side ready to go ( Lindsay demonstates this start in GPP). I have noted if they are block starts. If I am doing starts over hurdles for time it was always from the blocks
-
b) The only time we used build up starts would have been for EFE or FEF. So from a crouch start these runs were timed.
-
I am not sure I understand your question. I began the workout very tight. We started doing 10’s , they looked pretty good. In an attempt to progress the workout but still maintain some caution a 20 m run was chosen in place of another 10 meter. If the 20 meter starts to degrade ( which in this case it did) then you revert back to the 10’s which were working well. Typically 10’s in a first or second set might be done in a volume of 40 to 60 meters but then again that depends on weather, how the athltete is feeling , what the athlete’s background is doing speed etc. The most time that would have transpired would have been 3 to 4 min maybe if a break was happening anyway or a tiny walk back if we were still in the process of that set.
A go / no go intervention time had that been a greater distance would be consistent with breaks you take for those distances.
Have I answered this question properly? I think so.
Chris,
Charlie’s hand times were often generous (started at first touchdown versus first movement), but he had a consistent conversion to meet performances from them.
The last time I was with him in person, I realized how finite of an eye he had, as one of my runners did a 30m accel and after the run told him, “you are done today, that left hamstring tightened up a bit on that run” The kid hadn’t said a word about it to me or him. My point is the run to me looked fast/good for the kid. To Charlie, timed run or not, he saw something irregular and shut him down.
Hi Angela, thanks for detailed response. When I originally read the post about “speed workouts” and reviewed the times I assumed these were 10 m fly-in sprints, but having read ESTI’s comment about starting the clock on the first touchdown and a conversion factor, I’m not sure. Was this workout 10 m accelerations or 10 m fly-in sprints?
Best,
Christopher
I know what I feel is right… but I would like to know what should be considered the very minimum recovery time from crossing the finish line after running the 4 x 100m relay, to getting into the blocks for the 400m, as the 400m directly follows the 4 x 100m relay, which K anchors…
And sometimes, as with last night, as soon as she crosses the finish line they are getting ready to run the one and only heat of the girls 400m race, which is her main event, but because she is the fastest girl on the team, she is loaded up with relays too.
Yesterday was also the very first ‘warm’ day of the year, it was 80 degrees F, about 30 degrees warmer than last Saturday’s meet.
The coach runs her in this order: 4 x 100m, 400m, 200m, 4 x 400m, but I will strongly voice what is the proper recovery time.
I would really appreciate some back-up documentation or expertise, as I need to make sure that this is something that is followed… I want to keep my daughter injury free.
Generally, the higher the output of the sprinter the longer they will need to recover before the next “rep” if that next rep is to be performed at the highest possible quality. So it’s a highly subjective matter.
You may recall this event from Asafa Powell http://sports.ndtv.com/othersports/athletics/209958-asafa-powell-wins-100m-at-ostrava-golden-spike-amid-chaos in which he went 9.97 then 10.06 after the re-call and 400m event.
Clearly following the relay 100m leg with the 400m is at least a more favorable sequence then the alternative; however, as to the minimum recovery time for your daughter that would most definitively be answered according to her training journal- in terms of what rest time is she accustomed to between that range of speed endurance distance; provided she is given full recoveries in practice.
The biochemical technicalities at play are the required re-synthesis of adenosine triphosphate and reduction in blood lactate concentration that are required for her to perform optimally in the subsequent 400. There is no definitive way to answer how much time she needs without referencing previous training sessions or, best case scenario, trackside blood analysis (which isn’t likely to happen).
Rick,
Is she still using EMS?
I agree with Mr. Smith regarding referral to practice bouts and perhaps prior notes of similar situations if they are available. A female athlete that I’ve worked with has experienced various results with doubling the 100/200 races (rounds included) in one day high profile meets with as little recovery time as simply getting to the start line.
However with prime events coming directly after a sprint relay the advice given was to judge place and consider energy management during the baton carry. Since the work-up to the event was in some cases extensive this process was shortened taking into consideration what might be needed to get through on that day. Of course what is important for each event and the athlete’s willingness to cooperate was always a factor for us.
Friday:
Noon: Team bus ride to Seattle area Motel for Lake Washington meet the following day (Saturday), drive about 150 miles.
Been looking forward to this meet all year, as it has the top female sprinters in the State. K is in the final ‘fast’ heat of the 400m, which she was very excited about.
No workout this day, but did a few practice hand-offs for the relays that are scheduled for Saturday.
Saturday (today):
Up at 6:15am
At meet at 8:00am
12 girl athletes, 3 coaches
K is scheduled to run in this order: 4 x 200m, 4 x 100m, 400m
Temperature in 50’s, raining.
Athletes sat in stands until 10:00am, then the four 4 x 200m relay runners told by coach to go warm-up, as the 4 x 200m relay was the first event of the day and started in about half hour.
K said she did this for a warm-up on her own:
10m each of: A-skip, B-skip, C-skip, knee-lift
5 x 30m build-ups
She said while she was doing this, the other girls were doing static stretches or just standing around and not warming up. They were telling K that she needed to stay with them, not to do the build-ups.
They ran in the first heat, K was anchor.
At the last 10m before crossing the finish line, K slowed and pulled up quickly, as she felt a sharp pain and tightness in her right hamstring. One other girl on her relay team also had a hamstring injury during the same race.
Coach seen this, asked if she was ok, she told him what she felt and that she was going to talk to me about it. He told her if she felt pain she should not run anymore.
We walked over to a more private area and I checked out her hamstrings… both were completely tight, the right having a large inflamed/knot area in the center and about an inch or so above the knee.
K has always had very soft and pliable hamstrings… they have never been an issue.
Her quads do get tight, as she is quad dominate and historically I have had to focus mostly on them during massage.
I checked her quads, they were both also very tight and hard… not good at all.
I massaged her for awhile and then told her she shouldn’t run anymore that day.
We came home early.
I spent over an hour massaging her, after arriving at home, both hams and quads… better now, but still way too tight… still a large knot in the middle of her right hamstring.
Will be making the 150 mile drive to take her to the ‘magic Dr.’ on Monday and get a fix on this ASAP… she has Districts starting in just over a week away.
I really felt bad for her, she was so looking forward to the 400m race.
Unfortunate yet a learning experience. The road trip + colder the ambient temperature + the heat leaching effects of the rain demand a greater volume of extensive efforts to generate intramuscular temperature that supports the elasticity associated with more dynamic warm up efforts.
While the drills and buildups are great for the tail end of the warm up on such a day, the drills themselves demand an elastic element and thus she was working against herself from the get go; particularly over distances as short as 10m.
In such conditions of travel + weather she would have been much more optimally served by extending the drills to lengths of 50-100m or more via reduced movement amplitudes and intensities. In this way, much more heat will be developed at still a very low cost. These would be interspersed with calisthenics (pushups, squats, abs, lunges…) prior to her feeling good about more dynamic/semi explosive drills and ultimately build ups.
Also with you being there, I would encourage you to massage her before or during the warm up using more friction, shaking, and so on to generate blood flow/heat as well as to assess her state of tone.
So keep all of this in mind moving forward.
I was at a meet today where the temp was 5-7 degrees Celsius all day, and absolutely horrendous winds. I had pants/shirt/thick sweat shirt/jacket/hat, and I was freezing all day. My only athlete sprinting was a 14 year old girl in her first meet set to the run 100m. I made her do a warmup that lasted approximately 45-50 minutes, with a lot of low-medium strides/jogs between 50 and 300m. Eventually she was primed, and I expected her flight should start in 10min and I stayed with her to have her go for another easy 50m stride out every 3 minutes or so. I thought we’d timed it perfectly…
As it turned out, there were flights of 10, 11, 12, and 13 year olds, before the 14-15s raced. None of the younger athletes used blocks, and the starter’s assistance took at least 30 seconds explaining to every flight how the starting procedure worked, and in almost every flight, the starter made the kids stand up at least once to go talk to them about staying still after the set command. Half of them were shivering and couldn’t keep still if they tried. It was timed finals with gusting winds in a meet that doesn’t count for anything or qualify for anything (no wind guage either). The track marshal was horrendously inefficient, and didn’t tell anyone their lanes until the previous flight had already run. It took probably 5 minutes per flight, for kids not using blocks. I decided to stay with her to ensure she wasn’t going to pull a muscle in the race, as 2 weekends from now is has a significant qualification meet for her. Most of the other 17 girls in her event stood around doing nothing for this whole hour long debacle to end. Eventually she ran, not particularly quickly, but finished the race without injury. 
Hope K heals quickly.
Isn’t there heightened chance of injury for an athlete who has been running faster than ever before? I recall charlie talking about it and I’ve observed it several times myself. In fact, it happened to a friend of mine recently who was getting excited about his times getting closer and closer to 11 flat. Despite my warnings he kept racing at max every weekend until, “out of the blue,” he tore his hamstring off the bone.
Be suspicious of the pb zone. It’s dangerous ground that you can’t tread too often…
I recall the same.
In the previous 2 months Gianna ran all distances from 60m to 800m faster every competition and improved every run, broke some Aust for age records. Before she went to the indoors another member of the coaching staff pulled a training session the Sunday before they left. At the indoors she got concussed before the 200m and cannot remember half the race. She should have been recovering instead of coaching, she was capable of winning all her races and breaking some records. This what I was training her for.
I recall it in a CNS discussion.
Weather can be the bane for us in the northern climates. I’m in the PNW and I’ve had HS athletes warmup in the gym of the school we’re running at. We’ve even warmed up in the hallways of a school (everything minus final accels in spikes), once we used the bus as a team hangout, heat cranked, when it was cold, raining and blowing. If we can’t do any of those we try to find dry out of wind areas (playground shelters, outdoor ‘hallways’ between buildings, behind the stadium, etc). I find having athletes physically warm (literal body temperature) absolutely critical for cold weather racing, Charlie’s “slow cooked moist to the bone”.
As mentioned, be careful with HS athletes after new PB’s. Some athletes that are still very developmental may be able to PB practically every week (e.g. freshman girl going 14.2, 14.3, 14.1, 14.0, 13.8) but others may need more monitoring. I also find that 100m PB’s need more managing than the 400m efforts. The nature of the beast, racing every (sometimes twice) a week can be a difficult thing to manage. This is where the art of coaching becomes more important than any plan or program and the best lessons unfortunately are often learned through failure.
I have been a member here since the first year my daughter ran track, as she was (and still is) so competitive and loves running so much, she would stay after the schools 6th grade track practices and ‘train’ herself… she was way over doing it and gave herself a bad case of shin-splints. That is when I decided I needed to learn what I could and help her keep from injuring herself.
The following year K joined the Seattle Speed track club and that also was a great learning experience.
From what I have learned from here, and from coach Cunliffe’s strict philosophy of “Less is More”, properly warming up before practice and especially a meet has been just a ‘given’.
In my last post I just put in the details without any real comment.
Honestly, I am confused and very surprised that throughout the week during ‘practice’ the coaches make sure the athletes are properly warmed up before doing any serious running.
But, at competition, when the same athletes will be operating at an even higher level, the athletes are told to go warm themselves up?
Especially when there are 3 coaches to 12 girls, mostly who are sitting in the stands because their events don’t start for over an hour or so.
These girls don’t have a clue as to what to do for a proper warm-up, my daughter did some of what we normally do, but not near the volume or same.
Only one time, 4 years ago, did K have an ‘injury’ that was related to what I was doing with her, the rest, were from school practice incidents, and one, when she wrestled on a boys wrestling team. That includes the past 2 winters that I trained K in mostly sub freezing temperatures, then competing indoors.
The incident 4 years ago was a similar situation, as yesterday, cold windy day, not keeping core warm and K had a pain in one of her quads after running.
Went to the best sports Orthopedic in town, he sent her to ‘therapy’, they wanted her to do 6 week+ program for $$$$… at the time she was with the Seattle Speed running club, went to their “Magic Dr.” and after about 20 minutes she was better than ever, literally.
That is when I found out she was ‘quad dominant’.
During the previous few years (she was age 12 at the time) while in track, or baseball/softball/soccer, whatever sport, when they would do ‘high-knee’ drills, she would only raise her knees to about 70 to 75 degrees, nothing near 90 degrees. I always assumed she just did not like the drill and was not putting in the effort.
After the 20 minutes with the doctor, she got off the table with a huge smile, said she felt ‘strange’, but in a great way, and shocked me when the doctor told her to lift her knees… she could lift them and nearly touch her chest!
The doctor said that because of an alignment issue that she had probably had all her life, her quads had to compensate while running, and were doing most of the work.
Since K started track, she has had probably 8 to 10 ‘injuries’ that were enough to take her to a local doctor, who would then send her to the usual ‘therapy’ for weeks, then after a couple weeks would I realize either it was not helping or that she should see Dr. Bruce (a couple times it was K who demanded to see him )… which each and every time ended the same…
After a few minutes with Dr. Bruce, she was ‘fixed’ each and every time, which caused me to feel quite stupid in front of my daughter, as she would be very upset for losing all those weeks of track doing ‘therapy’… and it has finally sunken in that whenever ANYTHING happens, I take her to this doctor first.
And again, we will see him tomorrow.
From gciriani:
“Rick,
Is she still using EMS?”
Sorry, I did not see your question until today.
Yes, I use EMS for both recovery and massage 2 times each week, when I can and followed by a manual massage.
Used it yesterday with the ‘Stretch Relax’ setting, then hand massage when we got home from the meet.
Today I was planning on using the ‘massage’ setting, then again, hand massage.
Do you have any suggestions?
Sorry, I did not see your question until today.
Yes, I use EMS for both recovery and massage 2 times each week, when I can and followed by a manual massage.
Used it yesterday with the ‘Stretch Relax’ setting, then hand massage when we got home from the meet.
Today I was planning on using the ‘massage’ setting, then again, hand massage.
Do you have any suggestions?
I assume you are staying away from the injured area of the hamstring when using EMS and massage?