A couple days ago it occurred to me that I had one more blog entry to reach 400 and figured it would only be appropriate if my 400th blog post was about the 400m (thanks to Nick for the suggestion). The 400m is one of the weird birds of track and field. Probably more so than any other event (other than the 800m) the 'Many Roads to Rome' concept seems to hold true. I'd like to take a look at why [...]

In track training, most of our workouts are centered around distances. Run 6 x 200m, 8 x 150m, etc. This makes good sense and is easy to standardize, make comparisons, and track the progress of training. The problem though is that success in track is judged by time not distance. So I was thinking...what if you made all (or some) of your workouts time based rather than distance based. While I alrea [...]

Normally I’m not a big fan of leaning at the tape. It’s not so much because I don’t think it can be effective. I know it can. In fact, the best outcome I ever had in a high school race was due to a dramatic (at least to me) lean at the finish. As a coach though, I’ve seen mistimed leans do more harm than good. Part of the problem is that when a lean is most needed (in a [...]

For the person who wrote me that the Jamaicans are not tested as frequently as other countries. I know that. How many times were Marion Jones and Justin Gatlin tested? You are naïve to think that testing catches the cheats. Let’s move on and recognize that there is an air of suspicion that surrounds all sports at the present time. I am not sure what can be done about this.Concerning some of th [...]

It's been widely stated (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) in the media that the American track team had a complete meltdown in Beijing. USATF's new CEO, Doug Logan, has even gone so far as to say our recent failures in Beijing may warrant a shakeup of the infrastructure of the organization. I mean, even when we won, it seemed we had really lost. At the close of the games, the U.S. had won 23 medals. Is this so ba [...]

I recently read an interesting article about Jeremy Wariner and his split from Coach Hart. There were some previously undisclosed and interesting tidbits in there about the split if that's what you're in to, but the most interesting part of the article was actually a quote from Jeremy's former Baylor teammate and 2004 Olympic gold medal relay anchor leg. Here's the excerpt with the quote in [...]

Amidst all the hype surrounding Usain Bolt's 100m world record, many overlooked a result from this past weekend that is perhaps just as, if not more, surprising. Jeremy Wariner LOST. I didn't think he could do that. The man's been a machine for the past 4 years. In fact, I think the last race he lost was in 2005 (not including one in which he DNF'd). His time was still great: 44.07 but he didn [...]

While I coach at Charleston, I still keep in contact with some of my former athletes through texting and other forms of communication. This past weekend, I got a text message that stated, "46.13 NCAA Automatic Mark!" I had the privilege of working with this athlete over the summer doing things like overhead back shot throw, underhand forward shot throw, squats, standing broad jumps, and vertical [...]

An excerpt from FoxSports Bottom 10:(2a) Jeremy Wariner: The defending Olympic champion in the 400 meters asked his coach to take a pay cut on their new contract. No big deal except the coach is Clyde Hart, his Baylor mentor and the man whose 4-by-4 relays earned All-America status 26 straight years and won 14 NCAA titles, which means he knows more about quarter-milers than Penn State knows about [...]

Did anyone else watch last night's Democratic Presidential debate on CNN? It wasn't the standard fare debate. Sure it had the usual canned questions but this one actually had some substantive battles and quite a bit of drama. How does this relate to a track and field site? Because as I was watching, I thought to myself- "this thing is like a great indoor 400m race." Some people got out real ha [...]