When’s your yearly break?
After the meet on the 14th, I’ll take some time off. Probably until the start of september then I’ll start up GPP again. I’ll take a full week off, then the following weeks will be active but no track stuff.
Sunday:
7xback throws with the shot
5x block starts
Feeling good for the meet
Meet was a little disappointing. I had a feeling that the month of bobsled training and testing took its toll on my SE fitness because going into my first meet I was quite adapted to these SE workouts and in decent 200m shape. When I got back from calgary I felt as though that was gone and didnt feel as good on the 120’s and 150’s.
100m:
11.10 (-2w)
Was feeling really good in the warm up. I was put in the B section and 2nd place next to me was 12.00s. So there wasnt any competition in that heat. The winds were brutal, swirling from -2 to +1 from one race to the next. For the 200m, there was a huge headwind on the curve that disappeared once you hit the straight because of the stands that blocked it.
200m:
23.00 (-0.2w)
The 200 is what shows me that I’ve lost that fitness that I had at the beginning of the year. If things were more ideal I would’nt have lost it during that month, but I guess that is the sacrifice I had to make.
2 more meets left in the season. All I’m going to do between now and then is maybe have an odd SE session to try and top myself up. We’ll see how things go.
Weird practice today. I know now that my SE is holding me back in my sprints and today confirmed it.
Ran
1x flying 30m electrically timed
3x150m
I was still pretty sore from the meet but I figured the wind resisted runs wouldnt have ruined my CNS too bad. So I thought I would just work on some SE, but my old coach had the timers out and I was curious.
Ran a pb of 2.87s on my only run, after having run 1 of the 150’s.
All of my 150’s were terribly slow, the one before and the 2 after the flying 30m. I take this as confirmation that my SE is down from neglecting it for a month, but my speed is as good as its ever been since I worked on short speed component for that month.
10x shot throws
4x5 box squats @ 315lbs
Won’t be doing much until the meet on monday.
I ran on monday. In the rain 11.05 into a -1.4 headwind.
I’m debating whether or not to end my season here or try to squeeze out one last 100m race this saturday. I’m leaning towards ending the season.
Keep on going man! Dont stop…too much hard work and training to end the season in early August bro.
Thanks for the support. But the trip to that meet would’ve cost me too much. So I decided to end my season here. Looking back at this season, although I didnt set a pb, I did a lot of things right. I started the season off with the best season openers ever. I came into the season with the attitude that this was a test so that I get things right in my indoor season.
Given that I came into the season with a bad 60m indoor season, I knew that I didnt have the pre-requisite speed required for a big pb in the 100. With that being said I think things went extremely well.
Bobsled preparations and camp put a damper on my season. I was able to go and impress at the camp, coming out as the #1 recruit. With less volume than the previous years my strength improved greatly. My weight was out of control after that bobsled camp, coming home at 205lbs. Given that I was at 10.8 shape at 200lbs, I think there is huge room for improvement by cutting weight. Nothing drastic, but just by cleaning up my diet I think I could easily be low 180lbs. Yeah, I’m a little fat now. Given that my pb was run at 189lbs, this could help a little.
The plan for now is 2 weeks off. 1 complete week off, 1 week active recovery (upper body, jogs, sports). Then back to the grind.
I’ve got my indoors planned out, and have started on a healthy diet already. I’m looking to get down to 6-7% body fat at 180-185.
GPP will be grass 40m and sleds. I’m looking to bump my Spec end up to 300m to see if I can maybe compete at that distance with the lowered body weight, it might not be as painful as it is now. I think this indoor could be very successful if everything pans out.
This season the main areas of focus for me was my weekly setup and how much volume I could handle. For speed I found that 400-500m/session of pure speed work worked best for me. Accels drain me for speed, so doing them after speed, or focusing on it on my Spec End day is probably most ideal. I’ll take this in to my indoor and see how it goes.
Good luck bro. I’m trying to gain weight because I feel like a skinny turd. I found when prepping for my summer season the sweet spot for me was 330-360 with the speed. Are you gonna bump your tempo volume?
With my job I have to adjust my training, gpp will work around a 3 day rotation - sun speed mon wts tue tempo repeat. Primary strength lifts will stay btw 6-12 and ol’s 6-12x2-3. Speed 180-300, tempo 3000.
Since I have decent weather I will start spec end in spp 150-300, starting with 2x300 working down to 1x150 b4 indoor comp.
What would a 500m speed session look like for you and why do you feel this is what works best?
Tempo I’m going to build up to 2000m x3/wk and just maintain it for a couple of months. I’m going to stick to 300m Spec for a while just because I probably have a lot to gain at that range.
Hopefully we’ll both have a great season.
Starting at 8x50m, or 8x flying 20m from a 30m, then progressing to 8xflying 20m from a 35m, to eventually 6x70m.
In the past I’ve done my accel volume followed by 4x60m, for about 400m of speed work. But what I found, for me anyways, was that the accels lowered the quality of my speed work, and that 4x60m wasnt enough to stimulate speed for me (at my level anyway).
So I tried switching to a high volume of pure speed work and it worked very well. Mind you I could only do this 2x per week vs 3x per week from before.
I timed all runs, and the quality stayed consistent throughout the runs. It got harder after the 5th rep, but the quality never dropped.
You have a much better chance then me, I’m not sure if I’m even running because I won’t have the time to focus on the proper training. Are you going to be able to handle that much tempo?
You are pushing the limits. Those flys must be submax?
Not sure if I can handle the tempo. I’ll progress slowly into it and see how it goes.
The fly’s are slightly submax. Especially indoors, its difficult to get even close to max in the facility i run in.
Its been almost 2 weeks that I’ve taken off. I’ve been mostly just relaxing out in the sun and playing a bit of basketball. I plan on starting to ease back into things this sunday. I’m going to keep the workouts fairly easy and just do whatever I feel like on that day.
I’ve got my diet in check. This is week 2 and things are going steady. I’m shooting for a 1-2lb fat loss per week and I think so far its getting there. Weighed in at 196 today. I’m reactively changing my calories if I notice that I’m dropping weight too quickly or if I dont drop any weight.
Sorry for quoting something that old. I have just started reading your journal.
I have exactly the same problem- constantly worried about the volumes and if it’s ok and if sth is enough specific. Did you get used to it? I mean to coaching yourself
It was tough for the year or so that I tried to coach myself. Eventually, I think I was getting used to it, although it took so much trial and error to get to a point where I wasnt ruining myself. Its because the experience isnt there to say oh yes this works because i’ve seen it. So the more you experiment and go through the process and see the result you get way more comfortable with planning things out.
I got to the point towards the end of this season where planning was very easy and I didnt worry so much about what I was going to do, because I knew what needed to be done and with a bit of experience I had seen what worked and what didnt. So the confidence comes with experience
Going to update whats been going on. I’ve been on a healthy diet for the past month since I ended my outdoor season. I’ve lost 8lbs and am feeling fantastic. I took a couple weeks off and then resumed lifting and doing random explosive workouts. Sometimes accels, sometimes jumps ect…
This is me at 191 this morning. I plan on getting down to 180-85. Keep in mind this is me flexing, I dont look like that just static, lol. My strength is up, squatted 355x8 and am not feeling any major detriments from the calorie restriction. When I hit my goal weight I’ll just increase calories to maintenance levels. Lyle’s site has helped me tremendously plan out my diet correctly.
I have been talking to my old coach from my school and we are working things out together. He asked if we could work something together and I welcomed the change. I’ve been sharing my ideas and a lot of info I have learned from this site with him. He will now integrate this into a program and I will help plan it with him, but he will administer it and help coach me. This should be a good change because I wont have to worry about the workouts and such. Plus there is a fairly big group with him already so it will be much more social.
The gist of the setup so far will be accels 2x/week, 1 on falt surface, 1 uphill and 1 long hill session. I’ll be keeping the medball throws, weights and plyos in as well.
My vert is getting up there with this weight loss. I was officially clocked in with a 37 inch vert the other day with the digital pad (straight leg landing). I was 200lbs when I ran 11.05 into a -1.4 wind. Be interesting to see what being at a healthy weight will do. Realistically, my diet is healthy now and I’m probably on par with calories. My old diet was shit and I was a fatty.
First workout back:
3x3x70m hills with 2mins break between reps, 8 minutes between sets
70’s were done in 9.5-10.5s.
The hill is quite steep. My head was spinning at the end of this one. The circulating lactic is quite high.
This will be my lower high CNS day in the mix. I havent quite planned out my weights yet because I’m going to wait and see what the rest of the week is like.
I’ll probably do 3x8 squats and 3x12 weighted hip thrusts.