Russell,
I have no issues with the number of hurdles (44)- we have workouts where we run over a 100 or so.
Likewise – I have no issues with the underlying distances – “raw” or by applying your “conversion factor”.
Understanding that the girls I’ve coached range from high 14 second to 17-18 second hurdlers (33″ – 8.5m spacing)- I guess my concerns are that these workouts are done over regulation height and spaced hurdles. I might feel differently if I was coaching 12-13 second girls/women…
Even with the best girl I’ve coached (14.7-14.9) – runs over regulation hurdles (33″ & 8.5m) have to be run at 95-100% intensity I imagine.
So as I noted in my previous post regarding this workout: “this is virtually like asking a hurdler to run a 55H race, 60H race, 100H race, 100H race, 60H race & then another 55H race when using regulation height/spaced hurdles. They were told to take a “full recovery” in between – but I still can’t see how the hurdlers can be expected to maintain quality technique/rhythm throughout with this workout.”
There’s no way I can ask a HS girl to perform this workout over regulation hurdles at practice – and expect to get quality hurdling. How much recovery time would be required to produce consistent touchdown times over these (effectively) 6 “races” in a practice session? Going to be long workout I suspect…
Really – even though I’m not a big advocate of 100% intensity runs over 10 hurdles at practice – my biggest concern is that this workout is prescribed over regulation vs. discounted hurdles. If the hurdles were discounted to allow the hurdler to maintain their race 3 step tempos (touchdown times) and technique (no reaching/over-striding/bounding)- set to set – then the workout might be do-able.
In regards to technique over the H10 – to me technique begins to suffer as fatigue accumulates. So I don’t know that I wouldn’t rather spend my time improving their speed endurance/special endurance qualities (w/out hurdles) to help them resist fatigue vs. spending time practicing technique in a fatigued state to emulate the last hurdle or two in a race. Again…many roads lead to Rome…but that’s my instinct.
And I much prefer to run workouts similar to what you suggest (3,5,7,7,5,3) & (1,1,10,10). That being said – with our HS season we often have meets 1-2x a week – so the 1,1,10,10 workout tends to take care of itself at meets (warm up starts, prelims & finals). And our other short speed/acceleration day is pretty much starts over 3-5 100m hurdles with full recoveries, a short break & a couple starts over 1-3 300m hurdles (all of my kids train for both events).
I like using the 1-3 300m hurdle starts to allow a higher velocity vs. running over 10 hurdles at a similar distance – while still having a couple hurdles to negotiate (almost like a missing hurdle drill). Depending on the athlete – we may cheat the hurdles a bit to get the desired lead leg (depending if we want to alternate or stay on the same lead).
Not sure if this helps…