Would you rather be a sprinter wrote:
Would you rather be a sprinter?
In my declining years, after 30+ years of "distance", I have often thought that it would be fun to focus on 100m to 800m. Something different. I have found that my "sprint" speed, slow as it is, hasn't declined as much as my middle distance speed.
That's interesting. On that thought, I haven't done an all-out 400m or 800m (I'm primarily for the longest track distances) since high school, so I haven't done any 400m/800m race-specific workouts. My long-distance times have come down quite a bit since high school (2 mins for 5K, 3 mins for 10K), and I wonder if my 400m/800m would naturally be faster as a result, or slower because I haven't been training for the short stuff.
PS--sorry to the sprinters on this board that I refer 800m to being a short event. It's all relative I guess--to me, 800m feels like a sprint.
Chica wrote:
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.
I have a friend who's close to your level. She and I do easy runs together. We go to the track and she'll do something like 6x1200m and I can only stay with her for two of those. After the third I'd go on my own and do 5x200m at 26-27 seconds. The other day while she was next to me her car I told her to accelerate with me while I built up to a sprint and she said we were moving over 20 mph for a short distance.
One of my 11.3 second 100m sprinter friends in high school has done an Ironman triathlon and sub 3 hour marathon while in college which I think is pretty amazing for being a sprinter. Good luck with your running.
Chica wrote:
3) I'm simply built for more of the longer races over the shorter ones.
Pics?