110/150/200 Workout

This month’s workout is another good running workout that serves as over-distance for 100/110m hurdlers and speed work for 300/400m hurdlers. When trying to build speed-endurance in hurdlers, it helps sometimes to do workouts in which the ladder goes upward, so that the athletes have to maintain their speed as the distances increase and fatigue becomes a factor.

Sprinting, like hurdling, is a rhythm thing, a cadence thing. With hurdling it’s more obvious, but what is hurdling if it’s not running over hurdles, right? So it’s a good idea to get hurdlers in the habit of maintaining a rhythm in their workouts, so that their bodies learn what certain speeds feel like, and how to shift gears when necessary. Too many athletes, especially at the high school level, just run as fast as they can every rep with no sense of pace, and therefore fall apart toward the end of workouts.

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The Workout:

This particular workout consists of the following reps:

• 2 sets of 3×110
• 2 sets of 2×150
• 1 set of 3×200

These reps should be run at 90% of full speed. To calculate 90%, I use the page of the BrianMac Sports Coach Web Site, which has training advice for every event in track and field and for every sport imaginable. This link is the page for 200 meter training. If you scroll down about ¾ of the way down the page, you’ll see a “Training Pace Calculator.” This feature has been invaluable for me in setting target times for my athletes in their workouts. It allows you to compute the target times for any training distance based on the athlete’s personal best (or projected personal best) in the 200.

So, for example, if my athlete’s target personal best in the 200 is 23.0, and I want his 150’s in this workout to be at 90% of full speed, then I can input that information and come up with the target time of 19.17 for the 150’s. If that feels a bit too fast based on where my athlete is currently, I can recalculate, based on, say, 85% of full speed, which would put the athlete at 20.29.

Recovery:

Because 90% of full speed is pretty fast, the rest periods should be fairly long. Here’s how I break it down:

• 2 minutes rest between 110 reps.
• 4 minutes rest between 110 sets.
• 3 minutes rest between 150 reps.
• 5 minutes rest between 150 sets.
• 4 minutes rest between 200 reps.

Variations:

As intimated earlier, you might want to go with 85% or even 80% of full speed if athletes’ conditioning is not up to par or if cold weather conditions are a factor. You might want to give 300/400 hurdlers less rest since they will have to deal with lactic acid build-up in races. Cut it down by maybe :30 between reps and 1:00 between sets.

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