Lactate Threshold Training

[Dazed]

@kitkat1

The following exchange has been copied across from Race Results because it is a topic specifically about the 400m race, its evolution through the tighter tournament format (reduction from 4 to 3 rounds) at World & Olympics and possible implications for coaching/training, kk:

From Robin1:

[b]8th fastest 400m time in the world by year:

2009: 44.78 (as of today)
2008: 44.63
2007: 44:56
2006: 44.71
2005: 44.60
2004: 44.64
2003: 44.75
2002: 44.84
2001: 44.70
2000: 44.66
1999: 44.59[/b]

I can’t see any trend here.

**

From Kitkat1:

Interesting though. It suggests the event has not progressed, despite no shortage of quality at the medals end of this spectrum.

More relevant would be figures for the last time needed to enter an Olympic or World Championship 400m final (as distinct from time of the eighth-placed finisher in finals). I suspect often the time of the last guy to qualify (out of the semis) will be faster than the eighth-placed time in the subsequent final.

But the observation is more relevant now since the Tournament structure has changed in recent years, within this decade for certain: World and Olympic Championships have been reduced to three rounds, instead of the traditional four rounds.

In Commonwealth Games, the rounds (not sure about the 2006 Games, sorry) have stayed at four, but since Vancouver Island 1994 finalists have been given a full day’s rest before racing for the medals.

They used to run four rounds over a roughly 28hrs period (across two successive days) with the semis only four hours or so before the final. That’s why the Com Games record set in 1970 at 45.0 lasted 20 years until the Aussie Darren Clark led two Kenyans into the 44s in Auckland.
Clark’s time of 44.60 then lasted only until the next Games in Canada because the Welsh winner may have been better prepared or more talented, but certainly the day’s rest before the final helped him to shave 0.02 off the record which still stands coming into India 2010.

The transformed competition format has created the potential for faster times in the preliminary rounds at all of the above tournaments.

One assumes the high performance managers for every national federation would have the figures to hand.

But the big question is, what are they going to do about it? These stats are all after the fact. How athletes and coaches should prepare to face the challenge remains paramount.

**

From Robin1:

[b]Here are the times needed to qualify for each WC final:

'09: 44.97
'07: 44.86
'05: 46.03 (John Steffenson, BTW)
'03: 45.03
'01: 45.10
'99: 45.24
'97: 44.69
'95: 45.47
'93: 45.01
'91: 45.53
'87: 45.21
'93: 45.83

Last three Olympics:

'08: 44.91
'04: 45.27
'00: 45.53[/b]

If anything, there seems to be a trend towards faster times needed for qualification.

Interestingly, the times in the final clearly suffered after the tough semifinals of 2009, 2008 and 2007 (three rounds with two days between semifinals and final), but not in 1997 (four rounds with one day between semifinals and final). I have previously suggested on this forum that the 48h rest between semifinal and final now in place may allow for the onset of DOMS thus limiting performance in the final.

**

From Kitkat:

You’ve got my rep pts, thanks Robin1, this is valuable information and we appreciate you putting in the time to research the data. I’m also going to copy it across to the lactate threshhold thread which has de facto been the receptical of all matters 400m.

Yes, many athletes have run slower in the final than the semis and I’m with you on the reasons which appear obvious, but then someone will come along and smash the final as Merritt did in Beijing. The only thing I can think of is that his speed reserve has become more significant than his aerobic power (think huge tempo base)in coping with the constricted format which emphasises speed from the first round. At Beijing we saw quarter-milers running sub-45 in their first-round heats because these now are akin to the quarter-finals of the defunct 4-round tournament format.

I suspect therefore the obvious implication for training/coaching for this event in a tournament situation is that the development or at least emphasis on the speed-power thread not be left until late in the preparation period, but rather emphasised virtually from Day-1 and pursued carefully but continuously.

Obviously how we do that is the trick and my colours are well and truly pinned to the mast of the so-called “concurrent” program model.

**

Great posts KK and Robin.

I may have something to add to this discussion.

Once the Olympic cycle is taken into account and removed (using a centered moving average), a trend in the eighth ranked athlete emerges, showing that the times are getting faster. Because just taking the eighth best time is fairly arbitrary I don’t think we can read too much into this. Using some form of average over the top 16 times and performing a time series on this, may allow you to draw stronger theories about the progression of the event over recent history.

The other is, that the move to the three round format does not appear to have had a significant effect on the time required to qualify for the final. It does appear to have made the range of times required to get in to become narrower. This may not be so much to do with the number of rounds themselves, as much as it has to do with the fact that instead of the top four in each semi qualifying, the seventh and eighth athletes progress on the basis of times. For instance this may mean that the third and fourth placed athletes cannot afford to back off as much as they had previously been able to get away with.

[kitkat1]

CHANGE OF TOPIC HERE.

This should have been pre-comp work but a six weeks setback due to a silly hammy injury has meant that he is only just now ready to do this set fast enough to be somewhat specific to his 400m intentions. So he is doing this set during the competition period, but his next 400m race will not come until next Saturday afternnoon. This guy has run only two 400m races to date.

Today’s session:
400m training

350m in 41sec
8mins rest
320m in 41sec
8min rest
300m in 41sec

“Can’t feel my butt” direct quote post set by the 400m sprinter whose best time is 48.0sec. But I think he looked on course to run well into the 47sec zone today, at worst 47.8

He ran this set solo.

The 41sec has a few 10ths here or there, but interesting the coincidence of times. The poor guy looked like he was treading water on that last rep. We’ll get blood lactate and bicarbonate readings for the same set next Sunday (if the physiologist gets to the track on time)

[John]

@kitkat1

This guy has run only two 40m races to date.

is 40m correct?

That session was done on the Sunday prior to this coming Saturday’s 400m?

[kitkat1]

all better now. 400m would be correct )

[Pmoax19]

@kitkat1

CHANGE OF TOPIC HERE.

This should have been pre-comp work but a six weeks setback due to a silly hammy injury has meant that he is only just now ready to do this set fast enough to be somewhat specific to his 400m intentions. So he is doing this set during the competition period, but his next 400m race will not come until next Saturday afternnoon. This guy has run only two 400m races to date.

Today’s session:
400m training

350m in 41sec
8mins rest
320m in 41sec
8min rest
300m in 41sec

“Can’t feel my butt” direct quote post set by the 400m sprinter whose best time is 48.0sec. But I think he looked on course to run well into the 47sec zone today, at worst 47.8

He ran this set solo.

The 41sec has a few 10ths here or there, but interesting the coincidence of times. The poor guy looked like he was treading water on that last rep. We’ll get blood lactate and bicarbonate readings for the same set next Sunday (if the physiologist gets to the track on time)

That is incredibly coincidental that they were all 41s. Did you ever get blood lactate readings from the next session?

[kitkat1]

@Pmoax19

That is incredibly coincidental that they were all 41s. Did you ever get blood lactate readings from the next session?

No unfortunately. But the next session finished with a 38sec 300m.

[John]

400 Meter Training: Blending Short-to-Long and Long-to-Short Methods – Part I

http://speedendurance.com/2010/04/26/400-meter-training-blending-short-to-long-and-long-to-short-methods-part-i/#respond

[kitkat1]

Darren Clark gets vertical: NB - this image is reversed, but shows Clark mid stride down the backstraight during a 400m race. Although not a tall man, he was maybe 5ft 10in tall, Clark had a huge stride which came “effortlessly” due to his superior mechanics and relation as seen here. His best time is 44.38. He was fourth in two Olympic finals (84 & 88) and won Commonwealth gold in 1990.

[Sharmer]

@kitkat1

Darren Clark gets vertical: NB - this image is reversed, but shows Clark mid stride down the backstraight during a 400m race. Although not a tall man, he was maybe 5ft 10in tall, Clark had a huge stride which came “effortlessly” due to his superior mechanics and relation as seen here. His best time is 44.38. He was fourth in two Olympic finals (84 & 88) and won Commonwealth gold in 1990.

I met Darren a few times in 94 and 95 he appeared to have gained a lot of muscle mass compared to above pic. ??

[los]

@Sharmer

I met Darren a few times in 94 and 95 he appeared to have gained a lot of muscle mass compared to above pic. ??

Possibly due to stint with Balmain…?

[kitkat1]

@los

Possibly due to stint with Balmain…?

Yes, Balmain doing mindless and endless weight training and various other “strength endurance”
training. Oddly, during the season, weights was optional for the individual players.

But when Darren came out of the league season in late 1991, he trained for six weeks for sprints and went to time trial over 100m and clocked 11.5sec. Little wonder Balmain didn’t fare well that season if that’s how slow the rest of their players were. But I suppose they would argue they were only preparing them to sprint for 40 metres at tops.

Anyway, Clarky was in poor condition and huge, as Sharmer recalls correctly. He then needed achilles surgery in 1992 and missed Barcelona, but he trained very well and was in very good shape by 1993 when he finished a dominant domestic season and then went on holidays to Toronto and snagged the bronze medal at the world indoors.

In 94 his other achilles needed surgery and he hung on just long enough to give Capobianco a run in the Sydney meet, losing for the first time over 400m off the blocks to another Aussie for 11 years in open competition. A week or two later he had the surgery but never came back in a seriously sustained manner.

Then again by 95 he had gone to Souths as a strength and conditioning coach and was obsessing with brench pressing 300 lbs. I think he topped that, lifting around 130kg-plus. Why? Who knows? But he was well done as an elite athlete by then. Maybe he was the only one who didn’t realise that because he tried to train up for Atlanta 96 and ran some sessions with Cathy Freeman in Melbourne. He couldn’t keep up with her, throwing up after a couple of 300s or so Nic Bideau told me.

[flettotenko]

@kitkat1

No unfortunately. But the next session finished with a 38sec 300m.

was the last of the set, the 300m, from a 3point?

[100m001]

@kitkat1

Yours is an interesting question and one I’ve posed myself. I still don’t have a perfect answer. I asked it myself to Dan Pfaff at a time he was coaching Bruny and Donovan. He said he “isn’t smart enough” to figure out how to prepare an athlete with a specific variance for either grand prix style (one-off) competitions or championship tournaments (multi rounds).

But I honestly do not think my sessions, often with only a couple of sets (or 4 reps in total, no longer than 300m on a single rep - discounting the “broken” element to the set) are high in volume or intensity .

But you can keep the same work and turn down the intensity, gaining your race specific conditioning from … racing.

So if you race a lot, then tone down the sessions. Go with a 200 + 200 for example in the style of a strength & control session - the first 200 at the speed of the backend of your goal 400m race which, for a 50sec 400 would mean your opening 200 of the set would be inaround 26sec. Then you take your 2mins and you back it up in another 26 or whatever you can manage while maintaining form and avoiding too much tension.

I always tried to get “my” athletes to take “the physical” out of every run (especially races). By that I mean not trying to “muscle” the run. The more you try to use your strength, sometimes the less you have of it to use.

As has been said early in this thread, it is a paradox. You spend all year trying to build the threads of performance, but then if you try too hard to use them they desert you.

So you need to let everything come to you through rhythm.

I think that was the biggest lesson we all learned from watching Carl Lewis hold his nerve during his races. And of course we saw the same capacity in Tommie Smith.

These guys didn’t “push” - they didn’t grasp for something that wasn’t there. They just let it come out without forcing it.

That’s how I tried to get athletes to run their training sets because that’s ultimately how I wanted them to race.

Best post on CF website… This can even be applied to life, girls, ect…

[pavel]

@pierrejean

Quik:
This is an adaptation from the Czech Model table for 400m (based on the hundreths races they analysed since the late '70s so you can count on that it is the most reliable on the market ) :
11.9 - 22.9 - 34.8 - 48.0 (11.9 + 11.0 + 11.9 + 13.2)
12.1 - 23.3 - 35.4 - 49.0 (12.1 + 11.2 + 12.1 + 13.6)
12.3 - 23.6 - 36.0 - 50.0 (12.3 + 11.3 + 12.4 + 14.0)
12.5 - 24.0 - 36.6 - 51.0 (12.5 + 11.5 + 12.6 + 14.4)
12.7 - 24.3 - 37.2 - 52.0 (12.7 + 11.6 + 12.9 + 14.8)
The times are electric rounded.

If you are a 600-800m type of runner, you can go a little faster than the model, if you are a 100-200m type (your case) you have to go a little slower. If you go too fast for the first half, you’ll hit your speed reserve and since you don’t have the specific 400m endurance in place (i suppose) you won’t be able to resist to fatigue in the last straight.

From the Model and taking in account the small deviation due to your short sprint background, you can see that your split at 200m was a little too fast, your last bend too conservative because you were afraid of pain the last straight, and your last straight time is very good. Remember than anyway, fast or slow last bend, the pain will be the same in the last straight, so don’t think and run. All this assuming your splits are accurate.

When I ran 51,20 I had splits like this: 1.200m-26,20, 2.200m-25.00. What do you think about these splits? At that time I ran 10.95 over 100m. Do you think I am able to run under 50?

[pierrejean]

1.20sec difference is way too much, and i anyway don’t advocate even splits. So you could run maybe 1sec faster. To run 49sec, 10.95 is enough speed reserve provided you have specific endurance work done.

[John]

KK,
you mentioned here or certainly elsewhere about a NSW 400m project. Was that deemed a success and is it continuing?

[kitkat1]

Thought you’d never ask KiwiJ.

Yes, deemed a success. May actually receive some funding from the national federation, but meetings to this end aren’t due until late November. Knowing the national federation, it might not come through until the end of the 2010/11 summer domestic season. Which would still be better than never, you know what I mean.

Kevin Moore, now 20, who had not run 400m until January 2010, returned from the Com Games as a gold medallist, having split 45.9 on second leg of the 4x400m team. He then acted the role of the “umpire” in the victory celebration which took the form of a cricket pantomime.

Lisa Spencer improved 6 sec on her previous attempts at 400 Hurdles and she came up again in late September to win the IAAF Oceania Area Championship 400H by 30 metres, although her time was restricted by very strong wind.

Matt Lynch ran on an Australian 4x400 relay in May but as I think was noted, he was tripped by a Japanese runner moving across lanes behind him and when he fell he received a depressed fracture of the head of the tibia (top of the shin bone). Amazingly, he got up and ran the last 350m of the race.

Matt is emerghing from a long and largely uninterrupted GPP phase following almost exactly the sessions and sequence of sessions listed in this “lactate threshold” thread. He has a bit of achilles inflammation in one leg, we think from when he had to push a training partner and car up a hill two weeks ago when the vehicle stalled.

Last week he time trialled 300m around two bends in 32.6. This was off a three-step walk-in start. He ran the first 70m into a strong wind which blew up on the edge of a very violent electric storm. The backstraight was run through a stiff cross-wind. And he picked up the taily over the last 70m or so. It is a PB. His previous PB was when he was fully rested and peaked. That was 32.8 on two straights in dead calm conditions. So I am expecting him to go sub-46 by his third 400m race of the new summer season.

We also had some pleasing results from “the nursery” and an Aboriginal teenager, Niwili Forrest, 6ft 3in and just 17 years old, has joined us. Doesn’t know anything about athletics. But super-fast learner and boy can he run. When he learns some efficiencies, he could be something very special. And a really nice kid. Bit of an artist, more contemporary indigenous style - prefers to work with paints and wax on silk with those dot paintings. His dad died the other day. Funderal this Thursday. The squad have taken him under their wing and we have become extended family it seems.

Todaty Kevin brought his Commonwealth Games gold medal to training on his return to the track after a 2-1/2wk rest. To show you what kind of a guy he is, Kevin ended the session by massaging the hamstrings and calves of training partner Matt Lynch. No airs and graces about anyone in this squad.

[kitkat1]

Matt Lynch on the fly - October 2010, Sydney Olympic Park (the 2000 Olympics warmup track)

[John]

@kitkat1

Kevin Moore, now 20, who had not run 400m until January 2010, returned from the Com Games as a gold medallist, having split 45.9 on second leg of the 4x400m team. He then acted the role of the “umpire” in the victory celebration which took the form of a cricket pantomime.

//youtu.be/xpKyLueihc0

and why

//youtu.be/4peJtHOe28M

good to see things are still going ahead and will be interested to see how this season goes. Always like to keep up with how my fellow Anzacistanians are getting on

[kitkat1]

Thanks John,

I got up at 2.30am to watch the final. The victory antics were as much fun as the race.

What about the Jamaican genius who tore down the backstraight on the second leg looking like a superstar to move in to second place, only to fade to a very distant last by the time he had to swap the baton. Spectacular FAIL ! Very amusing.