Run-Down Forums

[Conway]

Haven't heard the name Hailu Ebba forever ... I guess I just have a sprinters mentality .. My thought is this .. IF you are a 3:56 miler, why would you run laps of 63 & 64 in a race when you know there are other 3:56 milers ?? AND you know that the other guys in the race have much better kicks !!! Just doesn't make sense to me .. Or am I missing something .. Seems to me the way to beat a kicker is to take his legs away from him before he has a chance to execute ... Also seems to me any time you can get in a race and your PR is equal to or slightly better than others in the race that you run to your strength .. Why wait for someone else to beat me ??? What am I hoping for that someone pulls a muscle, falls down (well if Suzy is in the race)or lightning strikes ??? But then the question could be is this person running to win ?? Are they simply hoping to place ?? Or perhaps to finish ?? You distance guys are gonna have to help me here, cause I do not understand non aggressive competition .. A run out on the road yes ... But not a competition !!!!

[Dan]

I don't think you are looking at things the wrong way at all (most of what I believe about the sprints I derived from the coach in question), it's just that maintaining a maximum effort in an aerobic event is much different than the same concept in an anaerobic one. There are greatly varying responses across individuals to the different energy system demands, so it may not be as simple as just going out fast and challenging someone to pass you. Some people excel in that situation, while others can't fight off the early race lactic acid.

Dan

[ This Message was edited by: Dan on 2001-10-09 04:28 ]

[Conway]

When I think about holding maximumeffort in a distance race, I am thinking about maximum for the individual .. A pace that an individual can hold be it 60's for a mile for example .. I see guys who could probably hold 60s but they run 61/62 hoping ot have something in reserve for a kick .. But they end up losing a second they could have had .. See my philosophy is that you can get back time that has been lost .. Becasue to do so create undo aerobic stress .. Every time you give up .5 sec or 1 sec it costs you more to get it back !!! Therefore having a negative impact on your overall race .. When you are clearly better than others you can afford that .. When you are not better or marginal you canot afford that .. Take Alan Webb for example .. He should have been on the WC team this year .. But on the final lap he gave away about a second (by not moving up until mid back stretch) that he could never recover .. Had he moved up slightly from bell to back stretch his would have been a different finish ..

See everyone talks about how critical time is in the sprints .. We look at reaction times and judge the difference between winning and losing .. A stumble at the start making the difference in the race .. Well ask Stephanie Graf or Borzakovsky if they looked back over the coure of the season and saw a fraction of a second in any of several races that could have meant the difference in their season .. In a close race at ANY distance fractions count .. And even in distance races 1 or 2 seconds is the difference between medaling and not being mentioned at all .. The difference is that sprinters live thinking about fractions of time and distance runners don't .. And I think that is a critical mistake .. Going at the right time, maintaining contact are all different methods of actually accounting for fractions of time .. The keyin each instance being to not give up time that it will be costly to try to regain .. Sort of like the stock market .. A $100,000 loss in your portfolio costs you much more to regain a get even to where you would have been - both in time and money ... Running is the same way .. Every bit of time you give up early takes more to get back later ..

Try this with your athletes in training .. When doing repeats (sprinters, half milers, whoever) ask them to jump on it from the start .. As opposed to getting half way and trying to "turn it on" so they can make the time they need ot make .. Your sprinters will find that say they are running repeat 200s, that by doing this they can run 22.5/23 as easily as 24.5/25 by just jumping on it from the start .. They'll even find they can do it and relax because having the speed up early puts them in the position to do so ... A more efficient use of time as opposed ot fighting against time .. which is what one does when they give time away early ...

I don't know, always worked for me !!!

[Dan]

[Conway]

Yes I think that distance runners waste so much time and energy at the beginning of races .. Just squander it as if it is there for the taking .. Then hustle like heck to try and get it back at the end ... Sheesh ..

Oh the sprinter you are referring to is Valery Borzov .. Had a wrist injury at one point (trying to remember if it was broken or just badly sprained) .. But he used that modified start to great perfection actually .. Alan Wells of Great Britain did something sort of similar .. But Alan tried it without and ended up having to become conventional becasue rules stipulate that sprinters must start from blocks !!!

At one time modified blocks were developed that had only one foot pad (in the middle) .. I believe as a result of Borzov's use of that style of starting ..

[Dan]

Well, you know what they say about distance runners. All that oxygen deprivation damages the brain cells.

Since I know you own ever T&FN since around the time I was born, I know better than to argue with you! At the time I was told about it, it wasn't a name I was familiar with, so I didn't think it was Borzov. Must've been before I knew about him.

Fortunately for me, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, I was never in a meet that required blocks to be used, so my "acutrak equalizer" as I called it was never disallowed. I did get some funny comments from starters at a few meets trying to decide if it was legal and not being able to think of any reason why it wouldn't be...

One of the schools in our conference (the head coach is a semi regular on the t-and-f list) uses a one-block start for most of their sprinters. It's rather annoying having them move down when everyone else is moving up on the 'set' command...

Dan

[Conway]

So it seems to me that we are saying that both standards and goals may be the culprit here ... Is that what I am hearing from you guys ??

[Dan]

Yeah, I think that pretty much sums it up. Goals are basically an indication of the standards that necessitate the setting of them. Andre Cason said he wanted to run as close to 9-flat as possible. Do you think he actually set that as his goal? No, I would guess his goal was to run 9.85 or faster and set the world record.

Records improve faster than human ability, fitness, training methods, coaching, shoes, track surfaces, and even performance enhancing drugs should make possible, so the logical conclusion is that improvements come from raised standards which individuals or groups collectively try to better. I'm not sure what causes the occasional anomaly when someone smashes a barrier. Probably they momentarily forget to place a restriction on their goals...

Dan

[Conway]

Or maybe they just go out and run !!! They forget all the crap and just run .. In the imortal words of NIKE they just do it .. My favorite example of this is the 88 Olympics .. Women's 1500 .. Paula Ivan .. EVeryone thought she was rabbiting the race .. Everyone kept waiting for her to come back .. But Paula said to hell with tactics I'm going out and run .. And run .. And ran 3:53.96 ... At the time #2 ever behind only the great Kazankina .. And still #7 despite the Chinese anomoly .. And that is where the rare performance comes .. When individuals say to hell with convention, I'm just gonna try this !!! See J.J. Johnson ran 19.88 cause he didn't know any better .. Will be harder for him to reproduce now cause he will be trying too hard !!! Look at the 200 performances of Mike Marsh and Carl Lewis ... Their PRs came when they just ran .. In the early 90s when Carl made a big deal about Mennea's record "coming down" he couldn't get close ..

From my own history my best races came when I just ran .. I ran a couple of awesome races "sick" .. Why .. Cause I couldn't feel myself doing anything so I just ran !!! Just went for it hoping to do well ... And did ..

I say all of that becasue it is the false imposition of goals (ie ceilings) that limits performance .. The day Mo says "let me see how fast I can go" .. Instead of I think I can run 9.75 .. Is the day he goes 9.65 !!!!!

And the day american distance runners quit looking at the AFrican with awe and say scr-- it let me see how fast I can run .. Is the day we get back under 3:30 !!!

[Micah Ward]

wahts thot remorkk aboot drain bamage in destance ruuners?

Dan, you have hit the nail on the head. My 5K and 10K pr's came in races where I didn't really try to run all that hard...it just happened. My daughter is going through an almost two tear drought of no pr's and I think it is because she gets too tense before a race from worrying about her performance.

The great coach Zen Manchu once said, "Quit trying to run fast...instead just see how fast you can run."

Trust your training, relax and go!

[Dan]

[Conway]

The top performances almost always look easy .. It's becasue athletes find that ZONE ... .. But I am convinced that in order to find teh ZONE one HAS to RELAX .. The zone is only found through relaxation ..That's why I know MO can run much faster .. He runs whta I call relaxed-mechanical .. I'm waiting for him to hit relaxed ..