Background PR’s:
High school (2004-2008) - 47.47, 21.80
College (2008 - 2012) - 45.77, 21.47
Training background:
I come from a college program that was strictly long to short where we very rarely ever did actual speed work (30-60m) or speed endurance work (80-120) with full speed 150s and 300s being the closest thing to that towards the end of the season. My last outdoor season in college, I ran 45.9 at the first outdoor meet but my season pretty much ended after that due to having osteitis pubis. I have not competed since my last college season due to that injury but I am now 100% healed and looking to make a comeback.
My my question is should I now switch to a short to long program or stick with the long to short since I saw a big drop in my time in that program from high school to college? I was fully healed about 4 months ago and started a short to long program but I was constantly having Achilles, ankle and hip pain which caused me to constantly take days to full weeks off. This could have been just the cause of me taking so much time off from training but what would you guys suggest?
Thank you in advanced for the replies! I’m desperate to get back to the 45’s finally haha
I think the 1.7 second drop in 400m compared to the 0.33 drop in 200m shows that your long to short did a good job for your 400m, but didn’t do much for your speed.
Not knowing anything about you at all, I also wonder, as you questioned, if your injuries in S->L were caused by you jumping too quickly into some combination of too much intensity and/or too much volume after an extended training layoff (3 years), and might have happened with a L->S as well. What sort of time frame are you looking at?
If you want to get back under 46, my immediate thought is that for this season, appropriate goals might be improved general fitness, improved training load capacity, and improved speed. Is there a coach in your area with the expertise and “track record” (the expression, not literally) that you could hook up with?
There are others on this board with much more experience than me coaching 400m runners of your calibre.
Thanks for the response. I was thinking the same thing too, that I may have had these minor injuries even with a long to short program due to the amount of time I’ve taken off. Everything I do now is just in preparation for next season so I want to train through the summer just to get my body used to training again. I absolutely hated the long to short program I was in during college but I couldn’t really convince my coach to change the training style because of the progress that I made with it, but now I definitely want to train short to long. Should I do this but just use low volumes of speed work or would it be safer on my joints and what not to do long to short throughout summer while getting my body used to training again?