Friday was a great hill workout. Yesterday was a ridiculously solid strength session focused on jumps, loaded jumps, and messing around with some shoulder stuff. I've backed way off on any upper body lifting in the interest of keeping that mass or weight down. I'm consistently at 155-160 pounds regardless but every little bit I don't gain helps.
Today I felt really good but could definitely feel some nervous system fatigue but I went to the track anyway because it's the weekend and I won't be able to get on all week because of school. Tired, but not knackered, so I gave it a go. Freezing cold, 28 degrees and a steady ~10-15 mph wind. The turf infield was snow with spots of dry but lane 1 and 2 were dry from someone shoveling. The goal was 3 sets of 3 X 100 on 1:00 rest. Full recovery between sets. I stopped after two sets.
Choosing goal times for short intervals is pretty tricky and I've found it more effective to go by perceived effort and percentages. Similar to Daniel's VDOT chart I use a % chart based on various personal bests or current level of fitness. So today I ran at two efforts, 100% for the first ~20 meters and then 95% for the remaining 80 meters. Which is kind of similar to how you'd race a 200.
Times:
Set #1
13.6 blocks
13.8 no blocks/ curve
13.5 no blocks
Set #2
12.9 blocks
14.2 no blocks/ curve and I tripped, more on that in a minute.
13.6 no blocks
On the curve of that last set I kicked my leg on the swing through, first time that's happened. I'm wondering if that's a sign of the neural fatigue. My times were also meh but I was putting out the effort so I'm guessing that it was.
Then I practiced my starts. I still need work but they are getting better. My issue is that I take too big a first step when I need to keep it much shorter. Technically, your leg moves faster because it's not moving as far and also you're not loading that lead leg at a disadvantageous angle (too bent) and losing power on the drive. Similar to the loading disparity between a full squat and 3/4 squat, the 3/4 squat is much higher because you don't break over that more extreme/ weak angle. When I try really hard to explode out, I over step. When I relax and don't try as hard, it's much better and faster.
Then I ran one more 100, blocks, in 12.9.
Back to the VDOT idea thing and choosing splits. Taking out the trippy 100 this workout indicates that I'm in about 25 high 200 shape. That's very encouraging because today I was quite fatigued and the weather wasn't good for sprinting.
Good workout even though the times were mediocre. Being self coached and having no second opinion or source for advice I often doubt whether or not I'm training hard enough. I wonder if all those years of training too hard has made me too cautious. I could have banged out several more 100's in under 14" today but I don't know if I would have been better or worse for it. I think it's prudent to start with caution and work up but I still wonder what level of fatigue is good or bad with sprinting. There's something called autoregulating where you let the watch decide that point. Once you become too fatigued to finish within X% of the goal then you are done. I'm still figuring all this out. Of course time will tell and performance tests are needed which is something I am lacking. Maybe I need more time trials? I do know for sure that I am faster over 40 meters but that's not a good predictor of whether or not my 200 and 400 fitness is progressing, in fact it may indicate that my programming is wrong. It's also tough to track since I do (now) 95% of all of my training on a hill at 8200ft altitude which doesn't give reliable performance data for a track race. Lot's of questions. But, I am having a blast so that's all that really matters for now.
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