Relentless Ambition

Wednesday 29 August

Relay training

150m at end of workout: 16.84

Great to see my speed endurance is still at the same level, despite the vacations and the injuries.

Friday 31 August

Meet

Our track was closed because of the memorial van damme in a week so my coach advised me to run a 100m.

11.47 (+1.2) … I don’t even know what happened, good first 30m and at the end i get passed by 23+ runners on the 200m. I have to say though that the day before the race I stretched my hamstrings alot and they were quite loose. Same thing happened last year… after lots of stretching and getting more flexible in all areas my times increased significantly. I’m not going to do static stretching anymore, dynamic is the way to go.

I agree entirely…

I agree entirely…

How do you time your practice runs like the 150m? First step?

On the coach’s go signal. When we’re ready he shouts “set… go” !

Sunday 02 September

Meet

belgian junior championships relay, 4x100: we won in 43.51. ill post a video later

Wednesday 05 September

Taking it easy before big meet (sunday)

90-95% with more than enough recovery, focusing on technique and execution

4x40m

2x80m

1x150m

We captured some videos, side view and front view. I’ll upload them soon

I would be very wary of entirely dumping static type stretching from a warmup or cooldown. Dynamic stretching can be very aggressive and especially inappropriate for the early part of the warmup. I’ve seen a lot of stupid dynamic stretching in people’s warmups lately since it’s become the new flavour du jour, so be careful and make sure there is a gradual progression in your warmup.

Stretching for a great deal of time the day before a race shouldn’t be needed, so don’t blame static stretches- blame the timing.

My bad, I shouldn’t blame it on the static stretching, was pretty pissed with my time and blamed it on that. I now realize that I barely do static stretching and saved it for the day before the meet, I did the same thing last year and my times weren’t as good anymore, perhaps a change in stride or something due to the new flexibility.

here is a video of the 4x100 relay. I run the second leg in blue

http://tinyurl.com/9e9s47z

Sunday 9 September

Belgian Junior Championships

100m heat: 11.20 (w+2,0)
100m final : 11.03 (w+3,4)
200m final : 22.38 (w+2,3)

The times are okay, would have been cool to run a sub 11 though, legal wind or not. My first 60m are good as usual and then can’t seem to speed up anymore. That’s it for the season… next week relay championships and the week after a sweet decathlon just for fun

Congrats on your season. You ran a few PB’s which is always great.

You put together a really nice journal here, and it was nice to follow along and see what kind of workouts your coach assigned throughout the season and how it affected the final results. I know you complained about all the lactic workouts early on, and from your results with about two seconds coming off your 400, it seems the focus was on a lot of lactic work and probably not as much speed development as would be suitable for a big strong guy like yourself.

I know you have mentioned you might like to leave your coach. Have you had a chance to think more about that? I’m curious to hear your mindset now that your season is complete.

Well, i’m still not sure about leaving my coach. By reading and doing lots of research on this forum I’ve seen that ‘beginners’ need a longer GPP and basic fitness before speed work can be done. Alot of information to be found here: http://www.charliefrancis.com/community/showthread.php?19789-Speed-endurance-the-key-to-all-11-12second-sprinters

We had a discussion yesterday and he told me I’m far from my potential, and that with all my injuries and such it’s normal that speed work/power work was very limited. I duno I don’t really feel like leaving him, I have to think it through.
About the lactic work, I told him that when I ran 22.38 last week, my last 50m were horrible. He said I lack '250+150 workouts with 90 sec rest after the 250. I remember you, T-Slow saying the workout itself can’t really improve a 100m time, could they improve my last portion of the 200?

Wednesday 12 September

Relay exchanges/speed work

few relax exchanges for the 4x200 sunday, with 50m runup

3x30m
2x150m - last one in 16.90s

Friday 14 September

running in between small cones for rhythm and stride frequency.
3x

2x40m
2x60m

all relaxed and 95% effort

Sunday 16 September

Belgian relay championships

I ran the 4x200m heats and 3 hours later the 4x2 final.

We won in a time of 1:27’72

First leg for both and ran the final pretty fast, last 50m are a pain in the ass though. I’m curious about my time in the final, i’ll know once the video is up.

Wednesday 19 September

Running in between cones. It’s hard to explain but we had one row of cones placed close to each other for rythm/stride frequency. Other row had the cones spaced a bit larger… last row had a 2.70m space between cones. 4 rows of cones in total.

3x each row (20m run up), last one (2.70m) is very difficult to do. I really can’t understand how say Asafa Powell (2.60m stride length) can achieve such stride length. I really have to extend and overstride a lot to get such stride lol. After just 1 try my coach said it’s pointless to do right now as it could cause injury, but it was nice to see how big the elites stride length is.

3x40m
3x60m

Each with different starting positions.

My coach says I seem to have better top speed than before, I don’t know it seems that way too when I run. I said my season is finished but we have a meet 6th of October (where Meritt ran his WR). I’m in great shape right now and been injury free for the past weeks, haven’t missed one single session… so I think PB’s could fall that day. My coach will start the GPP late anyway

I’m not really a fan of the concept of artificially training stride length like that. I expect it would result in a forced technique and possibly injury from over striding. Better to let the stride lengthen as a result of general strength increases and hills, sleds, etc…

Agreed. Stride length is a side effect of strength and power, not the primary reason for running fast. It seems this coach pulls out weird workouts every so often…

Saturday 22 September

Pre-meet routine

Dynamic warm-up

3x20m with full rec.