400m can be raced with... a lot of aerobic and little sprint training , or, alot of sprint training and a little aerobic....

I was 5'8" roughly 145 in high school, played basketball 8 months out of the year, came out for track at the end of each January, and my fastest ever 400 split was 49.8. I also ran the 800 as my main event and my pr was 1:56.3. My training was mainly based around track intervals between 200 - 600. My base training came from 1000m intervals and sometimes a short run. My highest mileage week was 8 miles. I'm pretty sure that if I had lifted weights I could have run 48 open.

I meant to add that the main reason I feel lifting weights would have dropped my time by at least a second is because I was like a car whose speedometer went to 120 but the car would start shaking violently if it went 75 or above. I remember one workout where I was running 200's and could tell that while my turnover was good I wasn't covering that much ground with each stride. I believe that came from having a lack of power. Once again, add some power to my body back then and I think it would have made a huge difference in my sports performance overall, let alone the 400m.

yes, exactly. i would call him an idiot, but this was intentional. he was not willing to give up my sub-17 5k to make me a better sprinter. the fastest workout i ever got from freshman to junior year was 8x200m with 30s rest. if i could get points in the 400m while not training for it, he was more than happy to put me on the line for the 400m while assigning me 8 mile runs every day.

i don't think he's ever had a 400m training program in his 15+ years of coaching. we only had 3 guys go sub-52 in all of my years there. one was me my senior year, the other was a 100m/200m guy also during his senior year, and then a transfer student who had already run 56 in the 400 hurdles.

i am sure that at least couple of his 20+ sub-5 milers had the potential to be 51-54 400m runners. but if they do that, they won't run XC!

He sounds like quite the piece of work. Did you ever run 800/1600?

interesting post. i remember that edwin moses logged in regular 6 mile runs on a golf course to develop his stamina, a run of nine miles in one hour together with his friend henry rono is reported. as a fan of harald schmid who ran 44s /400 and 1:44 / 800 and used to run 6 x 1000 in 3 min with a short jog rest, i would say that 400m runners have to train not mainly aerobically but they should put in some serious aerobic stuff.

Just train enough what it takes to reach your individual top capacity. Easy as that if you know how to do it in a smart way.

What Phil and Fisky said.

Add Ingo Schultz 2.01 meters tall, 99 kg. for BMI of 24.5 to go with 44.66 PR. Also silver in 2001 World Champs and gold in 2002 European Champs..

ran 800m regularly, pr was 2:00.

1600m pr was 4:41 from sophomore year. i did not run it at all jr/sr year. as mentioned i did the same workouts as the milers so based on workout splits, i was pretty close to the guy who ran 4:35

I fully agree with you. The 400 hurdles example is excellent.

I heard Michael Johnson say on BBC coverage that he never ran longer than 600m in training. So while he may have been doing aerobic work, it certainly wouldn't be the sort distance runners do.

My understanding is that 400m can be approached, over the course of a 6-12 month training cycle, from a short-to-long strategy, a long-to-short strategy, or (more rarely) a combination.

A long-to-short strategy would entail moderate to high intensity workouts of 600-1200m repeats plus some easy runs of 20-30 minutes during early to mid cycle. Speed is not ignored during this part of the training; 300m repeats and 150m repeats would still be part of the training mix. Mid-cycle would see a transition down to 400-600m repeats and the addition of 30-60m sprints; along with less mileage (esp less easy aerobic runs). Late cycle would include few if any overdistance running.

In a nutshell, that's my best understanding of what OP may be referring to.

It really depends on fast twitch to slow twitch ratios, height/weight, body build and current fitness level. Most of the 400 is going to be anaerobic demands. But most pros train at different effort levels to train for top speed, middle race speed, and end speed. Some sprinters like Yohan Blake have to use different variations of workout modes to induce different types of muscle stress but mostly for running efficiency for his overall fitness economy.

If you need a running coach, send me an email of your work out history and we can work something out.

coach.chasewiedel@gmail.com