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Agreed. But , again , i currently don't care about what time on a proper track it would translate to. I care to time and improve those ME sprints. So, of course this 200m with two 90 degree turns on dusty gravel has nothing to do with a 200m on oval track. But if i always run this 200m, with the same sharp turns, on the same gravel, and i improve it, ain't it the same?
Re shorter straight sprints, the longest straight line in this field is 80m and i don't want to limit myself to this distance, i want the training benefit of longer sprints. Maybe I will time a few ME 80m next time just to report some normal times, lol
Why not go to a proper oval? Because it is a 15-20 minutes drive, while this park i go is 2 minutes walk, unbeatable convenience!

That is a fair point.
Still, i don't care to become a better track sprinter.  I can tolerate those decelerations and the alteration they may cause in the training ( or may not, but let's suppose they do, for the shake of the argument ).
Even so, i much prefer to do that 200m-with-two-decelerations-thing than either limit myself to max 80m sprints or to have to drive 20minutes downtown.
Hope it makes sense and i don't sound predetermined and stubborn? 

It is not the cuts , it is the longer distance that i wanted to include. I was influenced by this advice T0ddday gave me some time ago:

One additional thing I would like to say for those using tempo runs is do more than 100m.  I talked to Charlie Francis about this once and he had most people always do something with more than 100m unless recovery was REALLY short.  Reason being is that we use time as a proxy for intensity.   If you watch the olympics you see that Usain Bolt can make 10.1 look like he is jogging.   While nobody is as fast as bolt you can do surprisingly similar with over 90% of your 100m speed.  I can run high 11 with a complete shutdown.   The trick is to drive out really hard and then completely relax.  If I take a bit off of it I can expend very little energy and still run around 14 seconds which is technically 75% of my best 100m.    However, this is cheating.  It's not really a  75% intensity run, it's more like a 95% 50m run coupled with a 40% intensity deceleration.  NOT the point of tempo running.  The point is the entire run should be very submaximal but not shut down.   That's why I recommend you have a curve in your runs.  200m are good because even a beginner will usually have enough fitness for this distance.  In the 200m you have to work the curve so going 75% of your max 200m speed will usually be 75% intensity.   Good luck.

Now that i re-read it , he was referring to tempos. So maybe i should ( most probably i will ) switch it and instead of doing 80s tempos and 100-200s ME timed, do the opposite.

10 April 2014

Bodyweight@session : ???
Soreness : none
Injuries/aches : none

1 ½ hour full court basketball
Good endurance again, a bit improved again, sprints help as expected. Vert felt good too but didn't do any rim jumps so nothing to report.
Legs were a bit more stressed than last week though, they gave out about 1 hour in, shins started bugging too.
Maybe it was because i was able to up my tempo from the improved endurance. Or just too tired from previous days. Nothing too much anyway.

No , it was all out and it was 16 seconds, it just probably does not translate to a 16 seconds 100m dash on track.
Consider those sprints are:
-Hand timed.
-Standing start.
-Holding mobile on hand while running.
-Running on terribly slippery gravel.
-Even 100m includes a turn ( because of the field dimensions ), and it is not a soft oval turn, it is 90 degrees.
-Finishing time is not accurate, i either have to cut pace so i can press stop at finish line OR i just raise the phone and look at the time.

I do plan to go on track and get a stopwatch and/or video to get more accurate measurements, but it is too early for that yet, this was just the 3d time sprinting after 1 year of absence.

That is why i said i don't care about the measurements themselves. It was something around 16 seconds for something around 100m.
I am more interested about what the correlation with the other times say. ( 26s 150m - so 10s for the 100-150 and 38s 200m , so 12s for the 150-200 and 22s for the 100-200 in total ).
The inaccuracy in track-time-correspondence is still there in all those measurements, but the circumstances were the same so the relative differences can tell something about speed endurance or i don't know what...

Toddday???

Honestly, I have no idea what to make of running on terribly slippery gravel.  It sounds dangerous.  Isn't there a grass hill or something in the Eastern Bloc that is at least safe?  I wouldn't worry so much about the distance (although I would remove the 90 degree cut) and I would invest in something called a stop-watch.  You lean back on your drive leg and push off as you start your watch and then reach across and stop your watch on your first ground contact past the line.  I can do this and run 150 in between 17.2-17.9 each time (the variance is more like 17.4-17.7 during the reps when timed by someone else).  It takes practice but you can make hand timing yourself a useful practice tool.....

Anyway, I can't advocate running on slippery gravel or using a phone to time but IF one had a safe 80m surface I would just run 80m.  Like LBSS said you could run lines of 80m down and back just fine for tempo.  We actual used to do it as a turf cooldown and integrate skips and backward work and it was really great. You can get all kinds of fitness work in like that.   

As far as the times.... IF this was a track you could make some statements but since it's slippery gravel it's really hard to say.  IF it was a track your 200m shouldn't be grossly more than your 100m X 2.    Otherwise you are in such bad shape it's ridiculous.   The times you report however do push the 200m into almost a lactate run so it changes the scale a bit.  In general I would say if you run 100m in around 15s you shouldnt need more than 33-34 for a 200m.   Get to an oval and get your splits that way.  100m, 200m, 400m.

that video of bolt really is one of the most dumbfounding things i've ever seen. and the commentary is great: "oh lalalalala." exactly.

Lol , so you made a conclusion about my intensity based on my time, which is totally wrong already as T0ddday illustrated, but on top on that you don't even have a time, just the general feeling of '16 seconds is an eternity'.