Speed Development

It does work (60's with full recovery 1-2 times/wk) and you can combine a few 60's with an easy day running, but you have to make sure the volume is appropriate.

The effect of running 60's or 100's at 100% speed is VERY different than running 100m strides at 75% speed (what a sprinter might do for recovery). Even for people who are sprinters, the volume of pure speed work is not over 300 meters. For instance, HSI guys doing 6X60 or Carl Lewis doing 90,80,70,60 AS A FULL WORKOUT. You will not see Maurice Greene doing 10X60 at 100%, and this is for someone built for this kind of thing. If you do too much in a workout (and your speed starts to drop) you are training yourself to run slower, so either don't attempt more than a few sprints per workout or stop them entirely when you start to slow down.

When you get up to 10X200 or 10X300, you get into anaerobic capacity training, and this is where the lactate load rises significantly and can cause you to break down. These can be good workouts when are trying to sharpen for a race, but you have to make sure you don't do too much of this and you get plenty of recovery. These are NOT speed development. One that I use that is much less stressful is 6-10 X 100 where you sprint the straights and walk the turns for recovery. This still has a lactate load but is much less stressful on your running week than 10X300.