Thanks for asking. He made the final at our nationals in the 400! Unfortunately, he got a cramp in the final and DNF’d. I don’t want to hijack this thread, so I’ll update with lots of specifics in the Training Journal section this week and explain all the details about nationals, as well as how the summer season went. Basically, off of 12 weeks prep, he ran four consecutive PB’s in the 400 and shaved 1.5 seconds off his 400m PB to make the national finals. He then went out a couple of weeks later and finished fourth in the provincials in the 200 in his first 200m races of the season (PB in the semi, PB in the final). Two weeks later, he ran 21.21 in sub-optimal conditions, 0.41 seconds faster than his previous PB from two seasons ago. Overall, it was an amazingly successful season, and all credit goes to KitKat, Charlie, Angela, Waldemar and ESTI. I can’t tell you how much the information I’ve learned here over the years helped- it was like I was prepared for almost any situation even though it was my first time at a major meet. I think some people will get a real kick out of some of the details, as some of them are surreal! I’ll get cracking.
I like using timed runs instead of a distance myself. Not saying any is wrong or not, but I like the idea of a timed effort for the overall race time goal. If you aim to run 50 seconds, do a 50 sec hill run. The idea of a hard 50 sec effort gets instilled early in training plan. My HS girls do 60 seconds, as they run 63-65 range. My boys do 50 as they were 51-52 range. I found nice progress throughout the GPP on hills. We had land marks to gauge progress each session we did it.
Yeah I like the timed runs (and over time), this particular hill is about 350m long but first 25m isn’t great and the last 25m I like to use as walk pass the finish to get the hatred of the coach out of the way
I believe so. The difference is 7.5 seconds timed accurately is different than 45-50 seconds. is 50.1 really different from 49.8 on a hill run? But the variance of 7.5 seconds is quite different which makes a timed run quite hard, unless you have a neat way to accurately time it. Even so, some signal would not be made and received by the runner until near 8 seconds.
If used in a general sense without a great deal of accuracy for distance, then it doesn’t matter much, as long as the effort is prescribed correctly for that time duration.
You could probably alter the distance to fit the time. For instance, an athlete who runs an 8s 60m could run a distance of 55m, while a 7s athlete could run a 66m distance. As long as they run consistently you could get an accurate adjustment to suit that time frame…
Monday - Standing 60m, a 150 (which he had to do twice as I stuffed up timing on first one), Hang Clean (3 reps), Push Ups and Chin Ups
Saturday - 300m Hill with backup from a walk down
Monday - slight improvement on all running
Saturday - 3.59 second improvement on first rep, second rep was 10 seconds slower (happy with that though)
Since the last testing weeks (8 weeks ago) the athlete injured his leg playing 2 games of futsal and 1 game of outdoor soccer and spent 3-4 weeks getting back into decent training. The hill session has been the biggest element in training.
from P89
I’d be thinking to throw in a circuit as well which could integrate a grid on a grassy field with various stations along the sidelines and do situps, pushups, star-jumps whatever, with skips or bunny hops, or backwards running, whatever to get from station to station.
FWIW here is something I did
Field circuit
from goal line to 1/2 way then did either 20 x situps, 10 x pushups or 15 x russian twist then back to goalline
run - situps
backwards run - pushups
farmers walk 22db - R twist
med ball chest pass - situps
med ball forward scoop - pushups
med ball backwards scoop - R twist
med ball o/head throw - situps
side run to left - pushups
side run to right - R twist
I think Kiwi John is on the money: it doesn’t matter much what is in the circuit, how many stations, how far apart. I just put it in there originally because it was a gut busting session based around power and certainly endurance. I just divided up a grass field (using the outlines for a soccer, hockey etc. field).
The circuit usually takes around 8mins to 9mins for someone who is not very advanced in their endurance training but it can be done in under 7mins by someone not too torn down but already very fit for this kind of training.
I introduced the circuit because I felt “my” sprinters sometimes became a bit too precious, fine-tuned, delicate. I wanted to rough them up a bit, make them a bit more rugged, disturb any complacency they may have about their place in the world of the toughest sports. Footballers do this sort of primitive circuit endurance training all the time.
In terms of “effort” the first time athletes do the circuit there is no pressure. They just need to complete the distance. Then as they get fitter they can think about racing the clock. We do the circuit twice with a full recovery between, in the same session, on a back-up day during weeks four and five of the GPP. So that’s 4-times per basic 6-week GPP. And the GPP cycle is repeated. So the power circuit will be done a total of 8 times over the course of the 12-weeks of GPP.
** “kiwi John”, if you read this could you please re-post that photo transfer website link you gave me years ago. I have left my job and all that kind of stuff unfortunately I left on the office computer system which I no longer have access to. Thanks John.
