Charlie, I was rereading some parts of Speed Trap last night and I had a question about one of the drills Percy had you do. You describe 100m runs in which you would go hard for the first 20m, relax for the next 60, and then hard again for the last 20.
In the book you state that you usually felt strong at the beginning and end of a 100 but sagged in the middle. The drill described above would seem to reinforce that pattern rather than strengthen the weak middle part. Would you explain the rationale behind the drill?
The problem I had was most likely due to a lack of top speed compared to some. I did do finish drills (which I did well) but the likely problem was pressing too much in bigger competitions. If I’d stepped over more and pushed less I’d have had a better top end in the races .
So the drill described above emphasized relaxation during the middle of the race, where you would normally try to push too hard and tighten up. Correct?
Not really. It was just another way to work on finish drills. I don’t think I had a problem with the componants of training- it was the frequency of speed sessions and the difficulty of putting the top speed section in after a hard acceleration (difficulty in keeping the legs underneath, rather than getting behind me in a over-pushing fashion).
Mostly “flying 20s” with relaxed run-ins of varying lengths to determine the execution speed- all with complete recovery. The narrow “breadth” of the work allows the “height” to be accessed more often.
Not all top speed drills have to be practiced at top speed at all times- though it is important to “max out” sometimes.