Charlie’s description of running a 100m race to me was simple: flick the wrist and pump the arms.
The reference to acceleration patterns I think has more training applications, e.g., flying sprints. If you do say a 20m flying sprint with a 50m lead in (total 70m), it’s really a 60m sprint with an extra 10m to get started so you’re not expending as much effort to overcome inertia. Hopefully, this will allow you to conserve energy at the beginning that can be applied later in the run to reach a higher max velocity than if you burned all out from the start. However, this does not necessarily result in a faster overall time for the run. In a race, Charlie always advised his sprinters to go all out from the start. That’s in Speed Trap as well.The point of my original post is that once you start to decelerate, don’t fight it. The very top guys can run to the end with little deceleration, but that’s a conditioning question. If for whatever reason you don’t have enough speed/conditioning to avoid deceleration there’s nothing you can do to stop it. You can only make it worse.
As far as acceleration training is concerned, it’s also a relaxation issue. Those “submaximal” starts you’re referring to are probably faster than your “maximal” starts. As a general rule, you usually run your fastest when you think you’re only going 90%. If you push the acceleration too hard, it causes you to tighten up. There’s a slight delay between when you apply effort and when you feel it get translated to the track. It’s only a fraction of a second but it seems much longer. A mistake many runners make is to keep pushing when they don’t feel instantaneous power.
lkh: JS
Oh, yes, you can do something to minimize deceleration. You can keep your head down and accelerate longer, so there’s less time to slow down–and that’s what the people at the top of the sport are doing. Bolt DID run 6.32 for 60 but 30-60 slower than Ben despite a higher top speed…and you do that by keeping your head down and accelerating longer. You can’t argue against this: It’s there in black and white in the splits! There is also a conditioning issue…and a power issue, but there IS a race modeling issue.