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Running Aimlessly Down Under - From 54 to 53 sec 400m
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Chivito550 wrote: »Next season I'm going to look at getting my gym programme modified as I feel it is getting a bit stale, but that's not something I plan to think about until mid September.
No harm to think about it in advance
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There are loads of really good gym programs out there if you have a look around on the web. Most of them assume that's the only exercise you do, so you can just spread them out over a longer time than they tell you to if you're struggling with recovery.
This would be a good winter template for example: http://stronglifts.com/5x5/
You can add in core work and other stuff at the end of the workout.
It's also a good idea to change focus as the season progresses. Try and build up a solid strength base during the winter, bring in more more speed-oriented stiff like plyos and olympic lifts for the few weeks of the winter indoor season, go back to the strength focus after that, and back again to a speed focus coming up to outdoor season.
There's lots of room for variety within that, I know I'd go mental if I was doing the same thing all the time!0 -
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A mixed day 2. DNF in hurdles, followed by a poor 15.31m in the discus in fairly cold and windy conditions. Rain then poured down for pole vault, and that combined with the fact they wouldn't let me start below 2m meant I no longer cared and did 2 no heights and passed my final attempt.
Conditions improved then and I ended up really enjoying the rest of the afternoon. Threw 14.66m in javelin which is a PB. Then ran 4:53.84 in the 1500m to finish 2nd out of the 7 of us, which was a great buzz as everyone was still there watching as the men's 4x4s and league presentations were still to come.
Just 1.78 seconds behind my PB from Vic Decathlon back in March, and I finished way too strong, and recovered much quicker than last time, so there was more there if I had a clue how to run distance events. A great fitness test ahead of the 400 in Lausanne and 800 in Zurich to close my season.
Final score was 2546 pts which was 357 pts off the PB. After such rotten weather, it is almost an irrelevance.
It was a truly crazy weekend. I do not believe the organisation was up to scratch, and the decathlon is far from given the respect it deserves here. But I'm delighted I did it, as I met lots of dead sound new people, and had a lot of laughs. There's a good event report in the making over the next few days so stay tuned.
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Part 2 of the decathlon report to come but first an update on this evening's track session, the last track session of the season for me.
The group were doing 3x300 but after a string of Wed evening spasms I requested something more endurance minded so I could run flat footed and therefore put less stress on my calves and finish a session.
So I did 5x200 with jog recovery, wearing the flats. Times were:
30.7 - 31.5 - 31.2 - 31.9 - 31.0
Recoveries ranged from 1:26 to 1:33. Nice to have a Wed spasm free after 4 on the bounce.
Massage tomorrow, then I fly to Zurich Fri evening. The next morning I'll head to Lausanne for one big final effort over 400m. The next day I'll do a recovery session in Lausanne, and then on the Monday I'll do something more 800m related in Berne. I don't envisage either being on a track. Then 3 days off as I won't have time once the Europeans start on the Tuesday. Then the media 800m on the Friday afternoon.
Then hopefully a mad night on the sauce to hopefully celebrate medals for Heff. Barr and English that day. 0 -
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About 4 weeks ago, before the national championships, and before I finally nailed that 54, I was frantically looking around for possible races to extend my season as after nationals there is not a whole lot left in Ireland. I had booked a full 9 days in Switzerland based around the European Championships. I had planned to travel the country for 3 days before the event started, so I had a gawk at the Swiss Athletics website. Eventually I came across one meet, the 2eme Meeting National de Courses in Lausanne. I hadn't considered Lausanne as part of my travels, but a bit of research into the place indicated that it was very much a place worth visiting. I wasn't sure what sort of standard this meet would be, but having looked at last year's results it seemed like it was a graded meeting and I wouldn't be out of my depth. So I contacted the man in charge who responded to me in the most basic English imaginable, an indication of the unusual challenges that this meet would provide compared to back home.
I flew into Zurich last night, had a quick look around, and then to bed. Up early this morning, check out and straight to the train station to pay the extortionate 60 euro one way 2 hour 10 minute journey to Lausanne. I wasn't willing to part with 15 CHF (about 12.50 euro) for a few corn flakes, toast and boiled eggs in my hotel, so I picked up some dodgey looking chicken and tartar sauce roll in a newsagent before boarding my train. It kept me full for all of 2 hours. I arrived in Lausanne at 11.30ish, absolutely starving. It took me an hour to get my bearings, find my hostel, and then head back out to a restaurant. It was now less than 2 and a half hours before my race, and I wasn't in the mood for being picky in a strange new city, so I went into the first Italian I found and ordered a pizza margarita. Not exactly the kind of food that one wants to be eating before a race. I picked up a poweraide and some bananas in the supermarket, so at least that part of my build up was normal.
Thanks to the incredibly efficient Swiss public transport I was out to the stadium in no time, with plenty of time to get myself ready and then relax for a bit before warming up. I got chatting to a girl who was sitting behind me, by accident, and it turned out she was a 400m runner also, with a PB of 58, but only running around 60 at the moment. Like myself, she was basically hanging on since nationals, stretching out the season when perhaps the mind and body has had enough. She gave me a few tips with regards where to warm up, when to be ready for my race etc, which was handy because almost nobody in Lausanne seem to speak English, and my French has slipped badly since the Leaving Cert!
The weather was astonishing. It was 26 degrees, bright and sunny. I should be used to this after my time in Melbourne, but I was actually finding it tough.
I warmed up with a jog around the outside of the stadium first. The Stade Olympique de la Pontaise is the venue for the annual Athletissima meet which began in 1977 and is now part of the Diamond League. The facility was impressive and the track appeared in excellent condition as you would expect. The Athletissima meeting records (which I'm assuming are also stadium records) for 400m are 43.66 by Michael Johnson, and 49.45 by Marie-Jose Perec. Tough shoes to fill!
There's a 50m warm up track beneath one of the stands, similar to that in Santry, so I did my drills there, but nobody seemed to care about people warming up on the actual track, so I ended up doing my strides outside.
To be honest I found the warm up a complete drag. I felt privileged to get the opportunity to race overseas in such a great environment, but at the same time, my mind was already thinking about the end of season break. I felt mentally drained from all the racing, and I couldn't wait to get the race out of the way so I could let loose on my trip around Switzerland. Not the best mental preparations, but after the highs of nationals, I've found it very hard to keep the same intensity up. I don't feel bad about this, it happens to the very best athletes in the world after all! How else can you explain Derval O'Rourke running 12.65 one week, then 2 weeks later at Weltklasse, barely squeeze inside 13 seconds!
With about 10 minutes to go before my race I head down to the start line and continue with my strides from an area where I can pay more attention to what is going on. With the language barrier, this was the part of the meet I was most worried about.
I hadn't a clue how many heats there were of the men's 400m, but as I saw some lads lining up their blocks, and seeing a spare lane, a moment of madness descended upon me. I went over to the official and asked was I in this race. He had no anglais! I genuinely started to think I was in this race and started to laugh but in a concerned manner. Eventually one lad came over with the start lists and I saw my name in heat 2. Crisis averted.
400m:
I was drawn in lane 3. You couldn't have imagined a better chance to run a PB. Great lane draw, warm and sunny conditions, great track. Yet for a combination of reasons my body and mind was just half a yard short in each aspect of the race.
I had no clue how fast the others were, but the first race was won in 47 flat, with the last place guy around 53. I didn't drive as hard out of the blocks as I should have. Definitely one of my more sluggish starts, and it seemed to take my brain a while to cop that I should be committing in the first 100. I felt a pretty strong headwind down the backstraight. I try to not drop the pace by much in the second 100 and kept a pretty high tempo until about 150m in when I switched off for a bit and went into autopilot. The guy in lane 1 ate up the stagger on me (lane 2 vacant) but I can't remember when). Outside me there's a few guys who really are not much ahead of me, and at the half way mark I fancied my chances at catching them. Then whatever happened in the third 100 of the race, they grabbed a few more metres on me. I didn't notice the full extent of the damage until I was in the straight. I was pushing hard in that third 100, but I guess the other guys were just fitter and holding their pace better. The final 100 I could feel myself tensing up, and had to remind myself to relax, which I didn't do as well as I did at Nationals. I tied up a bit in the home straight but the gap didn't really open up much more. I was about 6m down on the guy in second last, and maybe 10-15m down on a rake of athletes. It was a fairly competitive race and I didn't feel that some of those lads were hugely better than me, just a bit sharper in each element of the race, which made the difference at the end.
The winning time was 52.4 which I saw while I was still running. I knew when I saw this that there would be no 54, and expected a 55, maybe even 56. My time was 56.03 seconds, which is the 4th fastest run of the season. Given everything surrounding it, I'm not hugely unhappy with the run. I gave all I had on the day during that race, I was just past my peak for the season. My last race of the season is usually like that, but if I'm going to have an avarage end of season run, then I'd rather have it in a new environment like Lausanne, rather than a graded meet at Irishtown. It was a super experience getting to race here, and I even got chatting to one of my competitors after who had decent English. It was also pretty cool having the announcer call out my name and then say "Irlande".
On a very side note, that's now the 40th time I had run under 60 seconds. It's a fairly useless fact, but I'm a stats nerd and love useless facts!
So that's my final 400m race of the season. I'm now in holiday mode. But I still have the 800m media race on Friday. While I'm not pushed doing much in the way of training over the next few days, I'd love to finish my season with a PB in the Letzigrund. That would be something to tell the grandkids.
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Final training session of the season this morning. I wasn't really bothered doing anything as I'm in holiday mode now, but I didn't want to have a 6 day gap between last Saturday's race and the media 800m. I had a look at the satellite image on Google Maps of Bern, where I currently am, looking for an area of grass that I could run on, and to my surprise I found a track a 10 minute walk from my hostel.
The track was a sand track and was only 300m. It was actually closed but there wasn't anybody there checking so I jumped on as no way was I going to go search for other places to run.
I wore my runners and ran 5 laps of jogging the bends and striding the straights. Nothing too hectic but enough to get the heart rate and breathing up. A sort of session just to keep the fitness ticking over somewhat before Friday, as I won't get another chance to run between then and now.
I didn't waste much time. Just wanted to get the session over and done so I could get back to admiring this:
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