Elite coaching special - Clyde Hart coach to Michael Johnson and Jeremy Wariner

The 350m session
Clyde coaches with a mix of science, intuition and humour. His sense of fun comes out as he tells the story of why his athletes moved from a 300m session to doing 350m runs.

He said: "The workouts changed because of what research said. Many people get into their mind that running 300m is a 400m workout. It is not. It's a long speed workout. 3 x 300m is a 400m workout - or the last one is. But why waste the three others? You need a hard run of 40sec to get anaerobic. There is not a quality sprinter who won't run better than 40sec for 300m in practice so they are not getting lactate until the second or third. So the next time they came to the workout of 352 yards [300m] I had moved the cone to 350m. The first kid hadn't noticed and went off as though it was 300m and then at 320m it was like he had been shot.”

Clyde’s sense of humour was really shining through as he related the tale: “When he got off his knees and came through the finish he was saying some very bad things about the stadium manager for putting the cone in the wrong place.”

Clyde then explained what he had done and why.

"The guys were coming through in 28sec and running 48sec to 350m so they had 8sec of lactate build up. They were doing four off 5min to start.

"I got the ladies to run the same distance, they were running 31sec and 51sec."
Due to hitting 40sec earlier than the men the girls were filling up with lactic acid earlier and not hitting targets. They had 15sec of build up. It is about the amount of time spent in lactate. So the men do 350m and the women 300m.”

But the women do not get off so lightly! Clyde seems to enjoy adding a twist to their session: "The men do 350m x 3. The women do 300m, 300m then 350m. Why 350m on the last one? Because they have got all day to go throw up then.”

"Michael would run 3 in 45 sec off 5min. When he ran three in 43sec off 4min I knew he had never done that so I knew he was in the best condition for running off lactate that he had ever been.”

Clyde underlined the principle of training not being racing. It is about preparing the body to race: "The body, like anything else, responds to stress. You can't put it under stress in a big competition and expect it to respond unless you have put it in stress in training.

"With the 350ms I can get three out of them. They can run them fast and take 5min off and do another. Cutting the rest is the way to progress. Michael tried 3min recovery once and it got to him more than anything."

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