Would you rather be a sprinter?

Sort of. I don't know if I would be any more motivated to put in the work though!

of course! No distance runner starts out as a distance runner. We all tried to sprint first. Admit it. I started out in the sprinters group when I went out for high school track and got moved up into the distance group due to a lack of speed, but good endurance. We move up and up until we are competitive.

If I could be very muscular and be known as "the fastest man on earth" I would love to be a sprinter.

sure. every kid in 9th or 10th grade decides that they would rather go out and run a ten mile workout in the broiling sun or 15 x 400m instead of an hours worth of short intervals and weight lifting.

Even the great Jim Ryun, (in the school assembly, the 1st week of high school, when Coach Timmons got up and gave a pitch for coming out for X-C), thought to himself; "what kind of nut would purposely go out for that?"--lol--from "The Jim Ryun Story"

not anyone has that opinion, my pal is a born sprinter he has 2 parents who held medals in long and short sprints. Yet he loves triathlon, and with the right mind set, good follow up from my coaching training he got to the level of any competitive endurance athlete and beyond that...

He was a sprint swimmer and didn't do all to bad on the track or school sprints. Even when young(14 years old and 5 feet) he already broke 13 seconds on a 100 meter dash with swim training.

Each has its own value in my eyes(yeah I'm slow but i know big guys with tons of muscle that are slower then me.

I guess what i miss some and most other endurance athletes would want to miss, especially i can imagine that those who are shorter then average or just average height is size. Wouldn't it be fun to need to weigh 220 pounds of muscle to run well. As a triathlete it isn't as much of an issue as a runner but still say my pal is at maximum weight to run well at 165 pounds and 5'9". My maximum is also near where i am at 182 pounds. And if you are a pure runner and want to run 10000 under 28 minutes even that is to much --> 165 pounds/5'9" or 182 pounds/6'6".

For a triathlete 28'30" to 29'30" is more then enough at the top(in the future for Olympic medalists) i guess. Some more muscle is needed to bike and swim as well as survive transitions. Sure you have skinny swimmers, bikers and runners, but they all have a bit more muscle at specific places. And as a triathlete you need them all. So 130 pounds for a 5'9" or 170 pounds for me would be impossible to do all three... Still competitive triathletes wouldn't be mistaken for boxers in a club....Nor would runners.

The only endurance athletes that can combine mass with endurance are 200 meter swimmers, cross country skiers for shorter distances and rowers. especially the rowers...

As endurance athlete and as skinny as i am; i hate going out on some districts theirs many big guys looking for trouble and I'd be an easier target then a hockey player. At my height i need to at least weigh 220 to even look like i have some muscle to defend my ass. Shorter guys could easily get away with 175-180 pounds(when my training partner was a sprint swimmer he was looking more dangerous then i did and he only weighed in at 175 - 180 pounds even with a head shorter then me i think he had less to fear then me at 175 - 190 pounds...At 165 pounds he looks a bit more muscular then me but it has going down a lot as his muscles have gotten longer and smaller, now my height levels it out. And i guess we both are easier targets on the street then at least 35% of the other people out there.

TO me its the choice not whether i want to sprint or be an endurance guy, for me it is clear. But whether i can walk the streets relatively safe, and look great have ambitions to perform and aim for the best i can in endurance....

never never never never. only if i had natural talent and could still train like a XC guy

keep telling your self that

In high school I was a decent sprinter. I always wanted to be a distance runner, because it just seemed so much harder, and therefore badass. But I never thought I was good enough to run distance. Eventually my coaches moved me up to mid-distance, but I think I'm a better sprinter.

most athletes will run the shortest distance at which they can be competitive

and, yes, i'd rather be a sprinter

yea it be cool to be a sprinter, but not in the 100 cuz your race is over after 10-11 seconds, wheres the fun it that? Now 200 and 400 have some kind of build up during the race which is ideal for me.

Most of you would rather be a sprinter because of the image associated with those events, but when it comes down to it the majority of people actually enjoy running distance more than they enjoy sprinting. If this wasn't the case then you'd have a lot more people out at the local track sprinting for recreation. The fact is you don't and yet you see millions of people running distance simply because they love to do it (and I'm not talking about those you run just to keep the pounds off). I would definitely rather go run for 10 miles in the forest over going to the track and performing a sprint session.

recreational sprinting? wrote:

Most of you would rather be a sprinter because of the image associated with those events, but when it comes down to it the majority of people actually enjoy running distance more than they enjoy sprinting. If this wasn't the case then you'd have a lot more people out at the local track sprinting for recreation. The fact is you don't and yet you see millions of people running distance simply because they love to do it (and I'm not talking about those you run just to keep the pounds off). I would definitely rather go run for 10 miles in the forest over going to the track and performing a sprint session.

this thread is talking about 'competing/training' for competition, not what you want to do when you are 35 and retired.

I'm a sprinter and I love it. To quote Ricky Bobby, "I wanna go fast!!" Distance running looks so boring to me but I've never had to develop the mental toughness for it. I'd love to have distance runner ability for a day so I could enter a marathon and see what it felt like. But sprinting is so damn fun. Crossing the finish on your toes with high knees, arms pumping...it feels like flying.

WWWhhhhhhhhooooooaaa, "distance runner ability" has NOTHING to do with the imense amount of training to even complete a marathon.

maybe a lot of distance runners are just losers but when i was in 7th grade i was the fastest sprinter and distance runner at my school and i chose distance. i also didnt use caps in this post

Don't get me wrong, sprinters are great and everything, and I have a lot of appreciation for what they do (I could NEVER run a 200m in 26 seconds like my (female) sprinter track teammates could do), but I choose to do distance for 3 reasons--

1) I love it. I love to run far, just go for a long run and think. Plus, nothing feels better after a long day of work or classes than a nice 10-miler--it totally relaxes me.

2) I love racing distances. In distance races, a lot of change can happen over a 5K or 10K, and oftentimes, the person who leads the first mile doesn't end up winning.

3) I'm simply built for more of the longer races over the shorter ones.

Looking back, I wish I had stuck to the short sprints because my legs and butt were too big for the 800m and up (never broke 19 for 5k XC). On distance runs I've always been able to run forever at 7 minute mile pace and up but anything faster and my legs and lungs die.

I was the number 2 freshman sprinter at my high school. My pb's were 12.2 and 25.6 as a freshman running with a strained hip flexor and shin splints. The next year, to avoid injury and stay in shape I did XC and later decided to do the 800m in track. As a senior, my pb's were just 2:02 for 800m and 51.4 for 400m and I only started running at the end of April because I had tendonitis in my knee. It was disappointing. I think I could have been a lot better at the short sprints but we had a big team and I never really got or asked for any advice about sprints vs. distance so it's my fault. I wanted to be like Michael Johnson as a freshman.

At age 25, 6 ft 170 lbs, I've stayed fit since high school and I still do short sprints on the track (which I find fun) and long slow runs. I'd like to run open meets next summer at 100m and 200m. I feel faster and more explosive than in h.s., have a pretty good squat and leg press, and I've run near those freshman pb's in trainers in workouts. I know I can't run near my 800m and 400m pb's because my endurance is awful. Know any good sprint training websites or sprinting clubs in the Northwest?

I'm the exact opposite of you--can only manage a 16.3 in the 100m, somewhere around 33 seconds for 200m, and everytime we do sprints in cross-country, I struggle to keep up. I can manage to hold my sub-par raw speed for quite a long time though, as I've done 17:40 for 5K and 37:07 for 10K.

Surely, that's great you're planning on doing open meets for the 100m and 200m. Sadly, many sprinters, unless they go world class, give it up after college, mainly because the lack of opportunity. Good luck with this!