Does your coach make you do stuff that makes no sense? Ours had us do speedwork two days before a big meet. And guess what happened? We were tired and we didn't perform well. Does he not understand that there is no possible way the human body can benefit from speedwork in two days? I guess not.
Was it your goal race? I have to do this to my athletes sometimes and I have to remind them that there will be times during the season when we're racing on tired legs so that we can be in peak shape by post season. You can only taper for meets so many times before you're just not as fit as you could have been.
Yes, goal race. We didn't qualify for anything, so now our season is over. What a waste.
two things-
#1: you gotta come into the meet feeling strong. don't let anything that you did in the past get to you because it'll only harm you.
#2:speedwork is actually useful right before a meet. however it should not make you tired at all. rather, it is supposed to sharpen you speed. you are supposed to get a lot of rest. maybe you were just going too hard.
carunner9 wrote:
Does your coach make you do stuff that makes no sense? Ours had us do speedwork two days before a big meet. And guess what happened? We were tired and we didn't perform well. Does he not understand that there is no possible way the human body can benefit from speedwork in two days? I guess not.
First off if you had 2 full days in between your workout and meet, you should've been fine.
And if by speedwork you mean true speedwork
150s and 200s and the like
and not many of them
you should've been fine
What was the workout?
We ran a bunch of different intervals, different distances, at mile pace or slightly slower. Around two miles total. We kind of raised our eyebrows like "we're doing this TODAY?" p.s. the meet is a two-day meet, and I had to race both days. I don't know, maybe I was just tired at the end of the season, but I sure didn't feel fresh.
So what was the workout?
Number of intervals, rest, length, etc.?
What did you do leading up to the race the few weeks prior?
My coach usually has us do light speedwork the day before a meet to increase the tension in our muscle fibers. It's usually 3-4x200-400 at mile pace or so. If all you do is easy running and stretching before a race, your fibers will be loose and your legs will feel heavy. There's a great article on scienceofrunning.com that explains how this works.
It sounds like what your coach was doing was totally reasonable as long as it wasn't a very hard workout. My team once ran a long interval workout two days before a meet, and it was something like 2 sets of 600-800-800-1000 at mile pace. Nobody ran anywhere close to decent times that week.
The Animal Within wrote:
What was the workout?
Same question. Usually 4-6 x 400 at goal pace is not a bad idea if done 2-3 days before your race.
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