Sounds also like your 4 x 400m relay will be a good one too.
All i have heard about John S. is that he is competiting overseas? I guess he will Have to came back here for the National champs?
Hi coach,
Good to see things are on the mend.
I’m obviously missing something here and perhaps it is in the Time-Line.
Can you run the first grand prix 400m race and make up your mind after that?
If so, then perhaps you could skip the second grand prix 400m race which you say falls within the 10-day taper period.
Your athlete is not the most confident guy ever to lace on spikes. Nor is he the most experienced at 400m, and even with a season now behind him, it has also been a while since he last raced a lap (September, World Cup?).
Therefore, for a couple of reasons, he probably needs to have one big blow-out. That would definitely help him sort out his pace judgement.
Then if he needs more work in a particular department, you can set up something in a relaxed training environment to work through the issue(s).
In any case, during this last 6-weeks I would be working almost every track session on some aspect of race modelling. For example, even if it is only at relatively slow pace coming off a stressed recovery in a backup rep, he can still rehearse “lifting” out of the final bend, or holding a nice balanced line entering the home straight.
As regards the dodgy hamstring, you need to assess (in due course) what pace he can train at without pain. If he ran run 23sec for 200m or even 26sec, you can keep him extremely fit by stressing the recoveries; eg: 200 at 26sec, 30sec recovery, 200m at 26sec pace;
OR
Yu could ask him just to focus on quality of contact (triple extension etc) and put together a string of 6x200 in 26sec or faster (sub-24sec)- whatever he can manage without damaging the tissue.
He should train symptomatically in any case.
Hey Kit Kit and Sprint Coach,
I am in my first real long season of track and field in my new college and this weekend I ran my first two 400’s indoor which were 51.70 and 50.61. Can you give me any ideas on how to run or manage a indoor 400 meters from your experiences?Thanx alot. I have been training for a little over 3 weeks and my coach is really good,yet my strategy is a bit shaky.
Get to the front early and stay there. 
post deleted
We have no choice - as we were informed - my athlete has to run over this coming weekend AND the next AND Nationals the week after. The easiest is … accept and believe that we WILL survive … !
The ‘nerve’ is still stiff after a hard training session, but I started to do the massage myself - no training/education whatsoever in this department, but with the co-operation of my athlete … GO HARDER, MORE TO THE RIGHT, TOO MUCH … etc etc - we manage!! Maybe, one of these days, I can accompany teams as the official massage person!!
Training is relatively good - his base training was very good … this is our only ‘survival kit’. He is not ‘sharp’ at this stage - maybe the races will be good to get into form.
Luckily, after the Nationals, we will have enough time to prepare for meets in Europe and Japan.
I was impressed with John Steffenson … especially his self-confidence!! Nothing changed from CWG!!!
Will keep you all updated.
SC with the race this week how much bearing will that have on selection? I wonder if he is able to use that as purely a prep race for Nationals?
CF has talked elsewhere about consecutive weeks and viewing it as 1 block, he used Warriner last season as an example. I’ll see if I can find it. I took from it the work in between was the key.
Good work on the massage, you may get that job while away whether you want to or not 
Do you have to run 400m in all or can the middle one be 200m?
Found that thread. It may not be applicable now but may help for future reference.
http://www.charliefrancis.com/community/showthread.php?t=13962&highlight=Golden+League
Charlie - It has to be 400’s all the way. To be selected for Japan, the athlete has to run his SPECIFIC event twice before Nationals AND at Nationals.
If it wasn’t for the injury, we would have planned one at the beginning of the series, and one later. Now we don’t have a choice …
Thanks for the other info, John.
Steffensen’s ‘tolerating pain and sustaining rhythm’ - IAAF World Athletics Tour
Tuesday 27 February 2007
“Vincit Qui Se Vincit” reads the Latin inscription tattooed on John Steffensen’s right shoulder. It translates as, “He conquers who conquers himself.”
As the Commonwealth 400m champion fought off the temptation to stop in the interests of self-preservation during training at a super-heated Sydney Olympic Park at the end of last week, it was hard to think of a more appropriate personal motto.
John Steffensen of Australia celebrates his 400m win - Melbourne
(Getty Images)
After completing an hour-long warm-up involving 2.5km of accumulated sprints, Steffensen appealed via text message to his US-based coach, John Smith, to show a little humanity and let him break the session of 15 sprints over 100m (jogging the bends as recovery) into three sets of five 100m runs with more recovery time.
“I’m trying to get him to soften up,” Steffensen said.
Predictably, the SMS reply came back negative. “That’s bullshit, man. That’s not cool,” the runner complained.
John Steffensen (AUS) powers to 44.73 PB in 400m - Melbourne
(Getty Images)
Steffensen was a 4 x 400m relay silver medallist at the 2004 Olympics, but missed his chance to run the individual event in Athens.
Following the Games he flew to California to find Smith, a man whose ordinary name belies the fact he is an extraordinary coach – the most successful in Olympic 400m racing history.
2005 World Finalist seeks Osaka birthday present
John Steffensen after his lopsided victory over LaShawn Merritt in Sydney
(Getty Images)
After trials and tribulation, Steffensen adapted to the American’s ways and he made a stunning breakthrough at the most recent World Championships in 2005 in Helsinki where he reached the final of the individual 400m.
Last year he took another great leap forward, breaking 45 seconds and winning his first international multi-round tournament at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.
Since then he has been training to tolerate the pain and sustain the rhythm of a sub-44sec 400m because that is what he and Smith expect it will take to win at the next World Championships in Osaka, Japan, this year.
John Steffensen winning the 2006 Australian Championships
(Getty Images)
“My 25th birthday is on August 30 and I get my present in the 400m final on the 31st,” Steffensen predicted cheekily.
Before that he will race again in the World Championships selection trial at the Australian Championships in Brisbane on 9 – 11 March.
More immediately Steffensen will race at the opening meet of the IAAF World Athletics Tour 2007, at this Friday’s Telstra Melbourne Track Classic - IAAF Grand Prix - at Olympic Park, Melbourne, (2 March), in the Peter Norman memorial 200m - against Olympic champion Shawn Crawford, Joshua Ross (the recent 200m winner in the Sydney meet on 17 Feb – PB 20.70) and 2005 worlds finalist Patrick Johnson.
Brutal sessions - “I don’t throw up any more”
But right now it’s the training, a brutal cycle of daily sessions that stack up on each other to build – or break – the athlete.
“He thinks I’m like some superhuman being,” Steffensen says of taskmaster Smith. Superhuman? A work in progress at least. The day before, Steffensen put in seven hours’ training, including a feared track set of four 350m sprints splitting 40sec to 43sec at the 300m, followed by another set of five 200m sprints with short recoveries.
“If he had asked me to do that three years ago I’d have said, ‘John, that’s not possible’,” Steffensen said.
"It used to be my toughest session, but this 15 times 100m is harder because you can’t cheat. But I don’t throw up any more. That stopped two years ago. “Your body adapts, but at the moment I don’t like these 100s. It’s my toughest session right now.”
With a friend, former training partner Keiran Noonan, clocking splits from the infield John Steffensen is meeting his target times on the 100m straights but shuffling like a refugee beaten down by cruel adversity, around the bends. As the temperature hits the high 30s on the track, first Steffensen’s T-shirt is flung away, then eventually the racing singlet … anything to lighten the load and liberate the skin to cool and aid recovery.
At the top of the backstraight preceeding the 13th sprint in a scheduled set of 15 x 100m Steffensen staggers, stops jogging, aborts the start to the next sprint. He’s human afterall. He’s walking. Is he quitting?
He walks for just three paces, then it’s back to business. The business is conquering your own weakness and welding another rivet into that man-made, made-of-man bullet-proof vest he needs if he’s to win at the highest level.
Steffensen trains to create and sustain a world-beating racing rhythm which has become unbreakable, even when challenged by a metric-mile of sprints. His elegant strides tick over now with the reliability of an atomic clock.
And on the last 100m sprint this session, with even the cooling wind turning against him, he is clocked at 11.1sec _ a time few Australian footballers in any code could run once, fresh, much less on the 15th effort. Now this is courage under fire.
“I wanted to stop so many times. It wasn’t the workload. It was the sun, man. I was just overheating,’’ Steffensen explains.
Now it’s off to the weightlifting gym at the NSW Institute of Sport for a session of cleans, snatches, squats, then into the plunge pool, then home to Rushcutters Bay on the south-eastern shore of Sydney Harbour where the former West Australian lives with his fiancee, Zoe.
In his first race since the Melbourne Games, he won the 400m in the Sydney Telstra A-Series meeting on Saturday (17 Feb) in 45.07sec to relegate American LaShawn Merritt - ranked third in the world last year - to a distant runner-up in 45.81.
Olympic gold the goal
So the countdown to this year’s World championships in Japan has begun and Steffensen is the frontrunner with the world’s leading time, so far. Steffensen’s rise is an affirmation of the strength of mind over body as he has dedicated himself wholly to the fanciful goal of being an Olympic champion.
That’s why he went to Smith in late 2004 and implored the supercoach to take him on.
Steffensen left Athens with a silver medal as a member of the 4x400m relay, after which he fulfilled a pre-Games pledge to get that tat.
“A lot of athletes get a tattoo just for making the Olympic team but making the team is easy. I said I’d get a tattoo only if I won an Olympic medal,” he said. “I love what I do and I do it because I want to be the best in the world. The thrill I get from winning is a thrill I couldn’t get anywhere else. I thrive on it.”
Steffensen’s eccentric celebration upon winning the Commonwealth title in Melbourne last year drew criticism from some who interpreted his confidence as arrogance. It can be a fine line.
“But I don’t do all that stuff after a race because I want to be a funny-man,” he says. “The people who have conquered adversity know how I feel. I pictured all that, winning in front of the huge crowd, and it came true. Now I’ve experienced victory, I want more.”
So here’s another Latin quote for you, Steff.
“Audaces fortuna iuvat” - fortune favours the brave.
Mike Hurst (Sydney Daily Telegraph) for the IAAF
8 X 200 metres @ 100%(4 min recovery)
i didnt read this entire thread but if you can do all those workouts then you dont need to be asking for help on these boards thats for sure.
we used to run 6 200s in 24seconds and they hurt like hell. recovery was close to five minutes.
i run 3 in 21.6 or so and wouldnt even be able to finish.
so if you can run 4 @100% then you are a beast and we should be getting advise from you rather than giving lol
KK, thanks for that, interesting info. From what you know how realistic is Steffenson’s goal?
11.1s handtimed 100’s would convert to about 11.75 or 11.8s so that would mean that it’s the pace that smith wants steffensen coming home in the last 100 of his upcoming 400 races. I’m guessing this is the reason why smith wouldn’t let him split the workout up cause it’s a pacing workout similar to kitkats 6X200m in 23s. How long do some of yall think it will be before these paces translate to what they are aiming for. Is it realistic for steffensen to be aiming for such a time that he going for cause it’s a full second faster than his pb. Ah, it probably is realistic since he has taskmaster smith keeping a close eye.
Also, what kind of pace do u guys think the 5 X 200m are run at since it is after some intermediate pace 4 X 350m . Do yall think they are timed cooldowns like in hart’s program below 75% which he does after they main workout or might they be intermediate such as kitkats 6X200m. I’m guessing since steffensen used to believe they were impossible to do that they must be intermediate in nature. above 75%.
Appreciate ur guys thoughts
Didn’t time it, but looked like a stroll for Wariner!
1;37-8ish
Did you also notice he had to hit the Marker on the Hooter.
I did notice yes. Its my understanding Hart uses this method to ensure even pace, and that all runs are done at the prescribed speed.
SC how did things go at the weekend?
Not good - ONLY 46,7. But … on the positive side - the first 350m was at our planned RP. After that, nothing. But I have to add - It was his first race since Sept last year; I assume, I could not expect miracles.
At least he performed better than in training the last few sessions. I was at wits’ end. (I know I have been there a COUPLE of times - being a sprint coach, one has to get used to this feeling!!)
The pressure is HIGH, but I will stay positive - I am SURE it will be another story this coming weekend. Will IMMEDIATELY let you know!!
Another positive - my athlete LOVES rounds … there will be 3 at Nationals! Sometimes - especially at the beginning of his season - he struggles with the once-off races.
To summarize … If the winning time was 44", I would have been ‘down in the dumps’. To beat mid 46 is EASY!!!