who's tougher--sprinters or distance runners?

i'm a distance guy now but i used to train on the 800m sometimes with 100m guys

Now doing the distance thing day in and day out is straining but actually doing sprints and sprint workouts are tougher. You know you can feel great during hard distance runs such as tempos or 1000's repeats but in sprintining it just hurts all the time. Speed does kill

Distance running is harder - but not by much.

Most distance runners (including competitive ones) do about 80 percent of their training at low intensity speeds and easy recovery speeds. They only really only work hard on two or three days a week with intervals, or timed repeats.

Athletes such as Steve Moneghetti and Frank Shorter admitted that when they were at the peak of their careers - most runners and joggers could keep up with them most of the time....except that key 10-15% of the time when they ran intervals or tempo.

Take a guy like Doug Kurtis (Detroit, Michigan) who was one of the most prolific sub. 2.20 marathoners of all time.

He ran the vast majority of his training with marathoners in the 2:50-3 hour range. And about 85 percent of Doug's training was at an easy 7-7.30 per mile pace.

So running is not that hard a sport. Even at good levels, most of the time you are not running flat out.

It is true that intervals hurt (especially on the track) but most of the other stuff is not that painful.

The Kenyans/Ethiopians may do a higher percentage of their training at high intensities, but if you look at their overall training mileage, most of it is not high intensity or painful.....

Swimmers and cyclists go through more 'subjective pain' than runners. Rowers and cross country skiers also. One important difference is that those sports require 'total body' exertion.

The question is who is tougher? Without a doubt,

a sprinter will kick your ass! Who's going to mess

with a juiced up, muscle bound freak? We can't

even out run him because he'll do a 4.4 40 and then

kick our ass.

definetly distance runners. at least on my team we are. the distance team can take a lot more pain without complaining.

I think the toughness shows when athletes are asked to run over their race distance. Sprinters often complain about having to run a 400, and the amount of times i've seen sprinters run about 6-7seconds off their 400m PBs is amazing, solely because they woose out of it.

For MD/LD runners, running longer distances is very common, a 800 or 1500 runner will very rarely complain about having to run a 5k or a XC or something.... hell, alot of MD runners run about 150km/week. Sprinters think that doing a 2-lap warm up is hard

I think that both sprinting and distance running are about equal in terms of training diffculties.

The funny thing is however is that many of world's best distance runners are not much slower than the world's best sprinters IN THE SPRINTING EVENTS !!! Guys like Vaatainen (Euro 10k champ in 71) could run a 100m in 10.8 seconds. Bekele, El G and Geb can also run similar times. So if you had say Bekele vs Mo Green in 100m would you see Bekele bearing down on Mo Green in the closing stages of the race. If you raced Bekele and Mo Green over 400m then you would probably see Bekele take it on the finish line in about 47 seconds.

However if you raced Bekele and Mo Green at anything over 600m then it would be no contest, Bekele would be lapping him once you go beyond a race distance of 3 laps. Mo Green probably could not even run a 10k without stopping.

This is not to bash Mo Green and sprinters but it seems to go from 10.8 seconds to 10 seconds in the 100m seems to take a huge amount of training. It seems that humans as animals are actually very bad sprinters, many animals such as Grizzly Bears, Lions, Girraffes, would destroy Mo Green over 100m meters. However very few if any animals could run a marathon faster than Paul Tergat.

Distance Runner wrote:So if you had say Bekele vs Mo Green in 100m would you see Bekele bearing down on Mo Green in the closing stages of the race. If you raced Bekele and Mo Green over 400m then you would probably see Bekele take it on the finish line in about 47 seconds.

The Reality wrote:

You guys are so full of , most of you run because you couldn't bench press a broom stick and don't have enough coordination to make the cut in band.

Wrong, I love running. I was a middle distance runner. Sprinting is not that tough. Doing repeats are tough, and distance work can be tough as well.

Your statement about not being able to lift much is spoken like a true frat boy who thinks he's tough because he goes to the gym. You want to know a secret? If you lift regularly even a frat boy such as yourself gets bigger. As someone who can bench more than a broomstick, I'll tell you that lifting isn't harder than distance running, either.

most sprinters are lazy

gav800 wrote:

I think the toughness shows when athletes are asked to run over their race distance. Sprinters often complain about having to run a 400, and the amount of times i've seen sprinters run about 6-7seconds off their 400m PBs is amazing, solely because they woose out of it.

Sprinters think that doing a 2-lap warm up is hard

Best 400 IH guy I ever got to personally watch race ran x-c every year and jumped into a mile once or twice. He ran 4:19. He was NOT a distance runner and his best races were over 110 HH, 400, 400 IH, and 800.

The best long jumper on my team (former NYS Federation champ) would routinely run the 4x400m at league meets (when the jumping/short sprinting competition was weaker) and he would wreck me (and several other distance/mid-distance runners). We also made one of our shot-putters high jump and he worked his tail off until he scored us HJ points in a conference meet. He also almost made states in the shot.

Junior year I showed up on a Saturday morning to run mile repeats. I was the first distance runner and 3 sprinters and a mid-distance guy were already there doing sit-ups and push-ups. When I finished my four or five repeat miles they were still doing drills. They started their workout as I began my cool down.

As I recall Dominic Luka was running 400s and 800s when someone got him to run cross-country (and after a full year he finished second in NYS Federations). I doubt he thought of himself as a distance runner before that time even if he was a better distance runner than sprinter.

Don't just whine and bitch about this stuff. Maybe YOUR teammates are lazy, but that doesn't mean sprinters aren't exceedingly tough as anything.

gav800 wrote:

I think the toughness shows when athletes are asked to run over their race distance. Sprinters often complain about having to run a 400, and the amount of times i\'ve seen sprinters run about 6-7seconds off their 400m PBs is amazing, solely because they woose out of it.

Actually, that\'s just convenient. Distance runners have strong aerobic systems and thus can run a range of events from, say, 1500 m to 10 km, because they are really quite similar. Sprinters, on the other hand, train anaerobic systems. Why on earth would a sprinter be able to run a mile at any kind of a pace? It\'s like asking what El G could run for the 40.

I don\'t care if Bekele could bare down on any sprinter toward the end of a 100 m, he would lose, and lose handily. It is not his forte, plain and simple.

lazy wrote:

most sprinters are lazy

this

dean k wrote:

who's tougher--sprinters or distance runners? serious question. i'd say disttance runners by a longshot. both mentally and physically.

You probably just had the first day of practice and did a bunch of 400s? The distance runners fresh off of XC dominated practice. The sprinters were probably hurting. Happens all the time. Check back in May

Marshall1 wrote:

lazy wrote:

most sprinters are lazy

this

Seriously? A good sprinter/jumper/thrower or a good distance runner will put in ton of work. You might think they are lazy because every time you look over they are probably recovering. The practices are very detail oriented, tons of teaching/ learning technique, a lot of focus on the smallest of details. Long practice sessions. A lot of patience to improve by the smallest of margins. A sprinter won't PR by 5 seconds in every single meet. The results take time.

And then these youngsters will hop in the weight room.

You've finished your lat pull downs and 65lb bench press 3x10 and these guys and gals are just getting started on squats, dead lifts, cleans.

Distance runners put in a ton of work in all sorts of weather. They are very dedicated and so committed. I can't argue with that. They are also ignorant as to what kind of work it takes to be a really good sprinter/hurdler/jumper/vaulter/thrower.

dean k wrote:

who's tougher--sprinters or distance runners? serious question. i'd say disttance runners by a longshot. both mentally and physically.

Also to add I think a lot of this toughness mentality gets distance runners into trouble. They will train through any sort of acute soreness until it becomes chronic pain and then they are in a boot for three months.

distance runners hands down

I'd say distance running requires more focus and dedication. Sprinting is still cooler though and requires more athleticism.

I’ve done both, good 800m runners are the toughest of the toughest because they have to train both. Distance running is mentally tougher meaning it hurts more but sprinting requires more skill and laser-like focus as opposed to tolerance and prolonged focus.

Sprinting and distance might aswell be different sports entirely.

I think it depends heavily on what level you are at and how you are being trained.

There is a reason why you see 50+ kids in the 100 at a high school dual meet and only 3 in the 3000.