Does anybody know how fast the top speed of a sprinter is? As in klm’s per hr? The average speed is pretty useless, due to the first 10m is almost double that of any other 10m segment. Just looking for the absolute top speed. I have a GPS watch; it clocks speed, distance, time and combinations. Pretty awesome. I thought, since I don’t have anybody around to time my runs, I might as well go for top speed using the GPS. At the end of a hard session, I had 37.7klms hr. So it would be real handy to know the times of elite runners and runners of different abilities. It would also give a good indication of grass klm’s hr to tartan klm’s hr when I can actually get too a tartan track.
Using the split times form Ben Johnson’s & Maurice Greene’s 9.79’s at Seoul & Athens respectivly both have a fastest 10m split of 0.83s between 50-60m.
10/0.83 = 12.048m/s (x 3600) = 43.373km/hr (x 1000/1600) = 27.108miles/hr
37.7km/h is enough speed to run 10.84FAT - on grass.
Are you really at this level?.. or do you think that the watch may not be accurately reading speed because of your arm movement. How about you strap the watch to your torso or belt and report back your new speed reading. Should be interesting.
Interesting, what kind of watch is this and how much does it cost? Is there a link to a place that sells it?
I thought a .83s 10m split works out to 26.95mph? Is this site wrong?
http://www.cnylinks.com/converter.htm
Mo never recorded a .83 split in the Athens race
The watch is a Timex Ironman Triathlon Speed + Distance System. The actual receiver for the gps goes through the batteries, but hey, its worth it. Try going to http://bike-run-walk.com/ i think that is where i got mine from, and hey, if you live in australia, the aussie dollar is around an all time high, so big savings $$$$$$.
Bold, I got that exact watch as a gift but returned it because the “top speed achieved” function gave me some funny readings. In my flying 30’s and 60’s, where I wanted my own personal ‘radar gun’ to measure my top speed progress, I found that due to the 3-5 second delay between satellite updates as it is triangulating on the move, I might get lucky and get a true measurement in a run or I might not. Perhaps if I was running a 200m or 400m the GPS would have enough time-has this been the case for you? I race boats too and have found a similiar phenomenon with my boat unit. The distance measurements were amazing however, 400m was 400m, 100m was 100m, and so on within 1 metre at any distance I measured.
I have found so far, i think i may need a couple more wks to be sure, but if you just start the gps and bascicly go from where you are, then yes, the max speed seems all over the place, wereas if you callibrate it, ie make sure you run around a bit, do your warm up with it on, your strides throughs with it on and dont turn it off, it seems highly accurate. I found this out by misstake, as you do, by turning it on and jogging around a 400m oval, at the 200m mark, it read something like 300m! Man, i was about to return it, but i continued around the oval. After around another lap it seemed to just fix itself. then 200m was 200m. I have done the same with top speed, where after wearing it for like 1hr and about to have a 20min recovery, i turned it off. Turned it back on for the next effort, and bingo, bad readings. So if you do use it, leave it on for the duration of the session and be prepared to buy aaa batteries more often. If the watch can measure 10m to 100m accuratly, then at the same time, the speed will have to be just as accurate. Just make sure you do it on a clear day for best results.
Ahh, maybe I was hasty returning it. But in flying 30’s and 60’s even with adequate calibration time it still gave me some wonky readings. Have you repeated 60m or 100m tests on the top speed function? I never did 100m tests, I suspect they might have worked better as 10-12 seconds should be long enough for the GPS to get a solid read. By the way I’m proud to say that I can run a stirring 32.4 km per hour! [9 m/sec] How about you?
I was all set to purchase the timex speed + distance a little while ago and then I started doing some research on it and decided to hold off. Basically from what I read the thing takes a sample every second or so which is probably just not frequent enough to accuratly measure top speed for sprinters also gps can be fairly accurate over large distances but over short distances the technology just isn’t there yet. Even if it were only off by a meter or two over 30 meters it would be enough to give you very different readings for top speed for something like a flying 30m. I looked at the fitsense system with the shoepod but it states right in the user guide that it’s only good up to 20 mph which is just not fast enough for any aspiring sprinters (at least not male ones). Plus the watch part of the fitsense system is huge. The only one I haven’t found enough information on is the Nike SDM Triax which is very similar to the fitsense device (has anyone tried this for sprinting it’s pretty expensive about $200). The Nike SDM is supposed to calibrated over 400m - 800m though which kind of implies to me that it’s not designed for true sprinting speeds. Basically we sprinters have pretty specific needs and most of these devices are geared more torwards joggers, distance runners and cyclists…people who tend to cover long distances and are more concered with pace and how many miles they went and not top speed etc.
Update, I got the Timex yestersday to be completly accurate over 20m, 80m, 200m, 300m and 400m. And like you sayed, maybe your arm movement causes the speed to increase. Well, i stood perfectlly still and pumped my arms like i was sprinting. The watch was on the uppermost part of the arm. And the watch read 0.0klms an hr. So it does not seem to be affected by being on the arm. So just being silly maybe, i stood in the same place and went around and around in circles, the watch got a speed reading, as it should. Still fairlly touchy it seems. Now it may not read your absolute max top speed from the millisecond, but it will over an average of a second. So if you manage to run say 40klm hr on the watch, that would equate to a 40klm hr average over 1sec. Good enough for me. i Still need some more clear dry days to test, but from what i have seen, great.
Why don’t you just mark out 60m. Place two cones at 0m, 2 at 30m and 2 at 60m. Sprint the 60m and get someone to time you between the 30m and 60m. If they record 2.86 then your watch is correct.
Report back.
How does one tape a fly without a FAT system? Will accuracy be anywhere close with a stopwatch?
That’s what digital cameras are for.
Thanks Thor.
As Thor says DV is best - accurate to .02, but the stopwatch is good once the timer is experienced. Its very close for flying times.
Speaking of digital cameras, which ones do you guys recommend? I remember Rupert or Number Two posted pics of the one they use a while ago but I can’t find them in the archives.
bump, digital cameras?
Anything that uses Mini DV format tapes. The higher OPTICAL resolution the better. I have a Panasonic with 20x optical. They are pretty cheap now.
Unfortunately in the USA they are in NTSC format which is an archaic format using 29.97 frames per second instead of the 25fps of PAL, so this does make it a bit more difficult to get accurate times.
I see how it would be more difficult to get times but would not the times be more accurate, since the NTSC format has nearly 5 frames more per second?