Hi all, been a while since I’ve posted on here, but constantly am reading through old threads. Thanks Ange for maintaining this goldmine of information.
So basically I have been training more serious this past year with more free time and access to a great facility. My goal has been to officially run under 7 in the 60. All year I have been on pace to do so. I’ve been consistently under 4.0 for 30m on my Freelap timing system. Early in the year I ran under 7.10 for 60 on my Freelap as well. So I know I have the raw power and basic qualities to run well. Progressing through the fall on a SL scheme, I have been able to run 2.8 pretty consistently to 20, 3.9 to 30, and 4.9 to 40m. I gradually did my best to take my time to perfect each segment before progressing and lengthening the runs. I started to run out to 40m around October. Segments being roughly 2.85+1.10+1.0x on average at this point.
It’s kind of ridiculous, and I expect everyone to think I am trolling or something, but this is what really happened. As far as technically, I was really just working on making sure I maintained my body angle and avoiding popping up, just having a smooth transition. Some reps came out around my average time I just mentioned and everything was measured off correctly and my system was working just fine. Then, on a particular rep I checked my Freelap. It said “0.87” for the 30-40m split. The preceding split, however, was 1.25 from 20-30m. I thought perhaps the thing glitched and subtracted and added a tenth of a second or something. But during this session, I clocked 3 more ridiculous times (with some of my “normal times” here and there inbetween) which were a split of 0.91, 0.87 again, and finally 0.85. The caveat was that all of the fast runs were 1.2-1.3 from 20-30, whereas the more “normal” runs were around 1.10+1.0x. Since that session, on another day I clocked 0.86 on a flying drill. But that was only once. I have clocked plenty of pedestrian times since over 1.0.
I thought, assuming this is somehow legit, perhaps the very slow times during the 20-30 segment that set up the proceeding segments are indicative of ground contacts that are compensating for being too quick at the start. I thought perhaps I can try to shift this extra tenth or two onto the start, so that I can get into the proceeding segments more smoothly. I tried a few things and ended up running 0.9-1.0 during the 20-30 segments. This was compensated by running my first 20m about a tenth or two slower by emphasizing a few other things technically. However, using this strategy, I somehow slowed down a lot from 30-40. So the splits using this method were 2.9-3.0 for 20, 0.9-1.0 for 20-30, and 1.0-1.1 from 30-40. Doesn’t make sense either.
Obviously I haven’t been able to piece the best splits together. But if I somehow did, it would be 2.77+0.93+0.85. Which is pretty unbelievable. I just want to be able to optimize my time, but now I stepped into a can of worms where there are different approaches (cues, technical models, etc).
Unfortunately I have no film on these particular runs, which obviously occurred very unexpectedly on mostly 2 particular sessions. Hopefully I can catch another one soon so I can share what is going on. All I can tell you is how I felt. It was strange. My strides felt huge, but not through reaching of course. My arm action felt very reactive in those moments. I didn’t really feel the ground or my legs, but I would say oddly enough that my hips FELT lower to the ground, which is very strange. It was so easy and I felt like I could keep running like that forever. That is how they felt. In comparison, my slow runs feel shorter and more efforted. I just want to know what is going on here, and how to consistently run faster. Using the same cues I don’t get consistent results. I’d really appreciate any advice anyone has. Thank you for your time.