What do 50+ plus sprinters do for training?

Today was a fine weather day and I drove by the high school with the hurdle so I hopped out and spent almost two hours doing drills and hopping the hurdle. I didn't feel especially springy, but I was able to extend my previous PR of 24 hurdles clean clearance to 45 total. Five of those were with my non-dominant leg, and my technique was better on the last 15 or so. Halfway through my hip flexor was squeaking a bit, but some stretching and loosening seemed to clear things up. I can't try to force my way over the sticks, I just have to stay loose and springy.

Feeling more and more confident. We'll see how well my legs recover in the next few days.

Hi Chris,

Maybe you could try offloading some of your plyometric training to low impact alternatives such as box jumps onto a foam box or explosive skipping drills in the pool.

cheers and good luck

Thanks Greenstem. Will do. Unfortunately today i tried to do a simple lunge warmup and my left quad is still stuffed from Monday's session. I really believe the stepdown exercise has highlighted a severe weakness in my left thigh as a result of a serious stress fracture 2011.

I think lunges and stepups, which also use a lot of glutes and hammies, has masked the obvious weakness.

Hammies and glutes feel real fresh today, despite Sunday session.

I am coming good though, and i will be doing activities like you suggest such as box jumps.

My first aim next season is to break 14 seconds for 100m, so I have ten months to get my strength and power back up. Here is hoping for all of us over 50s.

great energy in this thread and i don't want to ruin that so please take this next comment with that in mind.

wanted to note to anyone that is cycling a bit here and there: you're not supposed to pull up on the pedal at all, let alone really hard. for most people they would be best served not clipping in (although shoe options are sooo much better if you get serious) and definitely not using toe straps.

as for the training i've been doing that seems to be working fairly well from a proprioceptive/movement-pattern standpoint: i walk/march through shallow water at the local beach with the goal being better posture/stature and general gracefulness. i have a history of stress fractures in my feet when running, so i have to pick and choose very carefully when i run, how far i run and how fast i run.

anyway, this walking and marching through the water feels a bit like the running motion for my legs, yet minimal impact since i'm walking. it's really cleaned up my stride. i'll run anywhere from about 50-200 meters through the shallow water and while i've not yet been on a track, i feel faster than i've ever been before at any age. i suspect i'm not actually faster than at any point in my life because that just sounds extremely unlikely. but it's hard to shake the sensation of it being so very different than my stride was historically. significantly more fluid.

i got hit hard by covid in summer of '21. lost 40lbs in 3 months because food made me extremely nauseous. i've been able to put about 15lbs back on since then, so am no longer severely underweight, but haven't gotten back into a rhythm of working out with actual intensity. it's weird because i'm in great shape geometrically speaking, but my work capacity at intensities above walking-effort combined with a general lack of any weight training in 18 months means my actual fitness is extremely low.

thanks to all for the motivation, advice, stories etc. with this thread. makes me want to order some spikes, not that there are any tracks around here I can use, but there's a nice fairway in my backyard i could use for sprints/drills/etc

Good stuff marching master. Yep, sprinting, if we can do it is a great form of exercise. It is why i try to get my 14 year old daughter to do it. She hates sport, but sprints work your entire legs.

As for cycling, i have been riding a lot for 55 years now, so it always feels a bit natural to me. Watt bike machine is good because it highlights leg strength discrepancy and makes you work harder with weaker leg to improve balance.

as for a track, find a nice grass oval. Better for strength and injury prevention

Are you sure about that? It was a steep hill and I was standing up to accelerate. If you don't pull up when standing up on a steep uphill, you'd have a dead spot in your pedal stroke. When sitting down, it's different.

mornin fisky. yeah i'm 100% sure of this.

as with all things in life there are exceptions, but those are pretty much limited to the gorillas doing sprints on the velodrome. they employ that technique off the line.

day started with some funny nerve stuff going through left quad.

However, despite a bit of ITB soreness when stretching, managed to do a leg strength session and 10km bike ride.

3 sets of stepdowns, stepups, single leg extensions and leg curls, and hyperextensions.

I'm just over the moon about last night's speed endurance/lactate tolerance session. This is my third time doing a version of this in 10 weeks and it really is a benchmark for my race pace effort development. It includes 2x4x100 (hard) at various incline, decline and flat, all measured against previous efforts, 4 min recovery and ten minutes easy jogging/standing between sets. These were on average a half second faster than last time and a full second faster than January. Another ten minute break and it was 4x350m steep hills, with full recovery. These averaged two seconds faster than last time and six faster than January (fastest of 1:23). What was amazing was the sense of control and ability to modulate the "gears" when I really needed to; every rep was faster than the last.

I have average or less intrinsic speed, not the greatest oxygen delivery, but I feel like my strength is my ability to absorb and process lactate, hence the 800 is "my" event. Actually, at the moment I feel like 600m might be my best event if I were to race today, which is fantastic at this point in what has been a super-consistent and encouraging buildup.

10 weeks until my first formal race(s) in 16 years. My new and unused Dragonflys, bought a year ago, wait patiently on the shelf.

One more update this week, owing to an adjustment I made in regards to tempo/LT training as I shift from 1500/800 to 800/400. For 30+ years I have used a measured four-mile course for most of my tempo/LT, which was appropriate for my distance running base, but lately as I focus more on speed, and frankly my aerobic condition has declined (a worthwhile tradeoff for me), running a hard half hour of tempo no longer seems like a worthwhile investment of energy and recovery, etc.. So last night I went to a different park, different mode, of 5x 5:00 at LT with 5 min jog recovery. Since it is an unmeasured course, I wasn't keeping splits, just going by feel, and really enjoying the shorter, more focused efforts. Finished pleasantly tired but not "wrung out", and everything feels more healthy and in balance. I may still run the "old" course from time to time, but I think I now will move forward with this "New trick for an old dog".

It feels good to evolve things for a new perspective of running. I made the leap from road running to track in the early '90s, and fell in love with higher speed. Now, 30 years later, I continue along the path, into the 400, hurdles, who knows what else?

I'm at the usatf Masters indoor championships now. I finished second in the 400m with the second fastest indoor time in the world this year in my age group. The 200m is this afternoon, but beating these pure sprinters is going to be a daunting task.

Get out hard and get after it! Good luck and please post your results.

Way to go! Second only to the great Charles Allie! Looks like you are the third Q for the 200 final.

bravo fisky, this is super impressive

keep it up, while you can ;)

Fantastic stuff fisky.

Nice! 💪👍

The 200m was a... learning experience. I sprained my ankle on my very first steps on the banking in warm up! I mean... the first freaking step! The pain wouldn't go away so I taped up, started easy in the prelim and finished 2nd. I had the 6th fastest indoor time in the world so far this year in the prelim (embarrassingly slow. I'm not sharing :) Charles Allie scratched with a minor injury so I would have been third had he been able to race.

With the ankle problem, I decided to start conservatively in the final to test the ankle and then make a tactical run for 2nd. But after giving up a lot of ground in the start, I was holding pace with the leader down the backstretch. At 100m, I was in 2nd and catching the leader so I thought... what the heck, go for it!

I made up some ground from 100 to 150m, but then I made a couple of rookie mistakes. I looked over at the leader just as the banking started downhill on the final turn! I took a step and there was no track! I stumbled and stepped completely over the inside lane. They were tough on lane violations so I knew it would be a DQ so I just jogged in. It was a DQ.

Looking at the race video, I wouldn't have caught him anyway, but I would have been faster than the prelims.

I trained exclusively for the 400m because some lingering injuries prevented me from doing pure speed workouts so I'm pleased with my result in the 400m, but I need more speed (and more talent) to run with the big dogs in the 200.

This is a good thread. I don't want to hijack it. Let's stay on point with sprint training. I'll share ideas when I can, but this is a learning thread for me.

well done fisky, I am sure you well with 200m outdoors this coming season

last night 7 or 8 reps of 100m. they were slow because I keep getting some nerve stuff in left thigh, especially when i try to stride out on toes at faster speed.

I can also be sitting down, and pain briefly comes and then goes a few minutes later.

While my hip flexors are fine, moderate pain comes and goes in all areas of left quad. Could be nerve, could be ITB. i will just keep working around it.