Is speed development a waste of time?

Most top mid-distance coaches do it; off the top of my head I can say Gjert Ingebritsen, Bernard Ouma, Ben Thomas, Geoff Wightman, Renato Canova all practice all-out/almost all out sprint at certain points of the year.

Half of those you mentioned do not do true speed development. As mentioned in my post, what Canova does is a little different. Shorter recovery than true speed development and often more reps and longer durations. Doing 10 x 12s hill sprints with 90-120s recovery is not speed development. Ben Thomas doesn’t do true speed development either. His athletes do short hill sprints at the end of a longer run or workout. Again, not what I am talking about. Wightman is the only athlete I really think does true speed development. Short reps of 8s or less with 3 minutes recovery , at a bare minimum and often longer. Overall volume is also low. I know the Gjert method has athletes doing short 60m sprints, but I’m not sure about specifics. I’ll count this, but sprint purists will say that doing 60m sprints after the second run of a 10k/10k double wouldn’t be doing the sprints fresh and wouldn’t have the same effect.

mid d guys do some pure speed workouts - usually stuff like 200s

distance guys do hills, sometimes hill sprints. But other than for hill training, the speed development doesn't have a lot of place at 5000 and beyond. Its never raw speed that comes into play on the bell lap, its endurance. Running all out when your legs are tired is endurance, not speed. Now in the 12s for 5k it might be a little different. A close race in the 12s could be won by speed over the last lap.

Good post. For true sprinting you have to be fresh. This is never going to be the case at the end of a distance race.

I’ve seen a Canova video/articles/post talking about sprinting - probably for mid-d runners. Don’t have it saved but if you dig long enough you’ll probably find it.

I remember seeing a Teare Strava post with short sprints which is why I said Ben Thimas.

Ouma 100% does “pure speed dev” - sled and all out short sprints.

Mark Rowland prescribes it as well.

Not sure if you’d consider them top runners, but the Pro UA team does speed development workouts.

I’ve seen the NAU athletes do pretty hard/short sprints + wickets.

Personally I do some hard 40m-80m sprints every 2 weeks or so in the base phase, but I am not a top runner worldwide but a pretty decent collegiate however (sub 3:40). I doubt that all the runners better than me would neglect this kind of work that doesn’t take up much time. It’s probably not essential to performing in the longer distances, however it likely does cause improvements in the 1500/5000 and definitely in the 800m since you’re improving your max speed and running efficiency.

There are no needs.

Take peak Usain Bolt and make him run a 1500m all out, I promise you he won't be able to run the last 100m in under 15 secs.

Well if you do not do "true speed development" then you probably need to do it. But it probably is not used all year round as much as the long run for 1500 on up.

My coach makes us do it. I feel like I’m better at speed development practice now than I am at racing an 8k though.

As has been stated, the limiting factor for most runners including the top pros is not speed but endurance.

Consider how many high school runners can run a 440 in under 60 seconds. There are far fewer that can string 2 of those together to break 2 for an 880, and a very small number of runners that can put 4 of those 440s together back to back to break 4 for a mile.

The average distance race at any level does not come down to a mad sprint at the end among the majority of the starters. The vast majority of all starters do not have the endurance required to maintain pace with the leaders, and fall off/drop well behind the leading pace long before the finish line.

Not totally discounting speed, but speed is of limited value if you don't have the endurance to be close enough to the front of the race at the end where you can use effectively use that speed.

Perhaps half or more of the field in an average Diamond League 1500 might have better short distance top end speed than Jakob I. It usually does not benefit them much as they are too far behind him with 100 or 200 to go for it to matter.

How is an athlete going to race first 400m of any race, 400m or longer sub-60 first 400m without some history of speed development?

Ten-thousand meters at Olympics over the past 30 or so years have removed some of the tactics, 10000m. Sometime prior to 1992, there was a preliminary round for every event, 10000m and shorter. Since it usually isn't wise to redline pace in heat, finishing speed is not solely based on what is left in the tank. Finishing speed often is a combination of several factors including 200m dash speed.

Men & women who race 10000m & Marathon at Olympics must choose: Race Marathon on 10000m training or race 10000m on Marathon training. Lasse Viren has discussed this. Nineteen-seven-six, Viren raced Marathon on 5000m & 10000m training; 1980, Viren raced 10000m on Marathon training. I do not know if G Rupp has publicly discussed this but it is obvious based on G Rupp's lack of sprinting ability certain years when he did speed development training and when he did not.

The reason most distance runners don't do speed development is because it isn't part of the tradition of distance running training. Also speed development done wrong both burns you out and dramatically increases the chance of injury. Most coaches don't know how to program it and most athletes hate doing it. You basically have to switch your brain from a "love the grind" distance training perspective to "do the bare minimum" sprint training perspective.

The concepts of speed and speed reserve are well established in sprint training and spriting based sports like football, rugby, etc... For example, 100M sprinters use the concept to win races. If your top speed is Y m/s and you can win your heat with 98% of that speed and your competition needs to run 99% of their top speed, then you have a much higher chance to win the final because you stressed your body less in the heats.

Most distance runners do speed work wrong.

1. Any "sprint" over 60m-80m isn't really a sprint. A 80m sprint at full gas is incredibly taxing and even sprinters are very cautious about long sprints at full gas.

2. The time between reps needs to be long. Like at least 2-3 mins long and most distance runners go crazy waiting that long.

3. You need to start slow and have very little volume. Most distance runners would get crazy sore from just the warm up needed to do a top end speed workout. Most distance runners would get 95% of the benefit just from practicing sprint drills.

4. Start way easier than you think when doing top speed and leave at least three reps in reserve. Do about 60% of what you think is needed in any given session but try to do 2 sessions a week to build up those connective tissues and brain circuity.

“True speed development” is the icing on the cake for high level runners that never get injured. The vast majority of distance runners have a half baked cake and are injured at least once during any given year. It is appropriate for almost no one.

A distance runner can do sprints until the cows come home and not improve his top-end speed. Strength does play a factor, but the guy with better leg speed is usually going to win.

Between himself and Dellinger, Salazar had tremendous coaching but he never improved his top-end speed. When the kicks started, he would be instantly gapped.

You mention A Salazar, the athlete but you chose to ignore A Salazar, the coach. A Salazar learned a lot regarding speed development after his peak racing days.

Not a waste of time.

Eventually speed training may even save you a few seconds.

All he learned during his peak racing days was that he couldn’t kick. If you watch some of his races, he would be pumping his arms, but his legs wouldn’t move any faster. In the 1984 Olympic Trials, of off a slow pace, he got out kicked by slow-twitch Pete Pfitzinger. Was speed development the difference between Salazar and Yifter?

Sprinters are fighting for tenths of a second. Marathoners round down to the nearest minute.

The risks of doing proper sprint sessions IMO outweigh the benefits for distance runners.

Strides are the happy medium. That’s why they became so popular.

You're simply doubling down on your original post. Once again, you are ignoring speed development training A Salazar learned from Peter & Sebastian Coe. You are ignoring speed development training as coached by A Salazar. Take the L. You are wrong.

Then why didn’t all those great runners like Salazar, Nenow, Porter and Virgin use it to improve their kicks? Chapa and Salazar did the same training, but Chapa put 6 seconds on Salazar during the last lap of Chapa’s 3000m AR. The difference was that Chapa had 51 400m speed and Salazar had maybe 56 speed.

If repeat 50 meters made a difference, every runner would have done them. It wouldn’t have been a secret until recently.