Everytime I run a 400m race, I run the first 300 fairly well. However, with about 100 to go, my entire body begins to tingle and I start to become light headed. My nose and fingers begin to cramp up, and it feels like I'm running in water.. are these common problems and what can I do to avoid them? I can get to the 300 at about 38 seconds, but then I die and end up with a 54 quarter.
Physical issues during the 400m
-
-
Participant
1. You need more Special Endurance work.
2. It's POSSIBLE, that your strategy for the 400 is not good.
In either case, we'd need to know more about your training to be sure.
-
Participant
Ok, I'm a senior in high school, and after cross country this year, I continued to do distance work. However, I realized that I'm more suited for the 4×200, 4×100, and 4×400, so I've been doing the following workout:
Monday – Acc. Dev. (10-30m reps…fast)
Tuesday – Ext. Tempo
Wednesday – Extended warm up and strides (shouldn't take more than 30-45 min)
Thursday – Hills
Friday – Ext. Tempo
Saturday – Intervals or Int. TempoI've also been doing 100 pushups a day and 500 crunches. I drink a lot of fluid, so I don't believe I'm dehydrated.
As for my 400m strategy, I've gone back and forth throughout my running career. Lately, I've focused on getting out really fast, maintaing until the 250, then going 100% into the finish. So here's the intensity per 100:
1st 100: 98%
2nd: 95%
3rd:95%
4th: 100%As soon as I hit the 250, as I said, I feel the tingling all over, especially in my arms and and the cramping in my fingers / face. I've tried to stay much more relaxed, which has helped reduce the pain in my collar bone, but that's about it.
As for special endurance, I'm not quite sure what that is. Should I be training differently from the program I have above?
If you need any more information, let me know and thanks.
-
Participant
I am a junior in high school and I also run the 400m, as well as the 200m (quite possibly some 800s this year) My personal strategy for the 400m is this???
1st 100 = 98%-100% Get out strong and try to make up some of the stagger.
2nd 100 = 95%-98% Usually keep my speed off the turn, use a little less energy, and hold my speed. I feel somewhat relaxed hitting about the 190m mark and this is where I take a second to check out where I am in the race, where my competition is???and how they seem to be doing. Sounds like a lot in the middle of a 400m but it helps to be aware of what is going on.
3rd 100 = 98%-100% This is where it gets tricky. Most high school 400m runners come into the second turn slow???or tired for that matter. I???ve found the best way to come into the second turn is hard. When I hit the 200m mark, I give an early kick if you will. It sounds like a lot???but get some of your teammates to stand on the corner and yell at you!
4th 100 = 100% Just give it all that you have left. It will hurt, but you have to stay focused and loose. Keep pushing through the finish line. Remember to lean. (I lost a trophy last season because I didn???t lean, lost by two 100ths of a second.) 🙁
I have never had trouble with blacking out or going tingly and numb. I???m usually too focused on the finish to realize how I feel. I have noticed finishing and my lips are numb but that???s about it. A senior on my team last year had trouble staying loose the last 100m. It cost him a few races and one he tightened up so much he blacked out and barely crossed the line. (he was in 1st until the last 15-20m)
-
Participant
dalnet,
My first question is how long have you been doing intensive tempo workouts? Special Endurance is broken up into two parts. Special Endurance I is any distance between 150-300m with full recovery in between each rep and a maximum total volume of 1000-1200m per session. Special Endurance II is any distance between 300-600m with full recovery in between each rep and a maximum total volume of 1200m per session.
As far as you and Trck400mRnnr's race strategy, this is how you run a 400:
1. Run the 1st 40-50m hard. Get out aggressively and push to the 1st 50m. Since you don't start oxygen debt in a sprint until after the 1st 6 sec, it makes the most sense to go out hard for the 1st 50m, which is about 6 sec, depending on how fast you are. Going out hard for the whole 100m would cause you to go into oxygen debt a lot sooner.
2. Once you get to 50m, you should relax. Don't slow down, just don't try to go any faster. This is the part of the race where Michael Johnson looks like he's jogging. He's actually going pretty fast, he's just relaxed. So once you get to 50m you should relax. You'll do this for the next 150m.
3. Now you???re about to go into the curve (3rd 100m). Right here is where you should become aggressive again. Because what you want to do here is maintain the pace that you've been running. To do this you have to be more aggressive with your arm action. Pumping your arms more will take some stress off of your legs and help you to put an overall effort into keeping your pace. This is the part of the race where Michael Johnson used to look like he started to run faster. But he actually wasn't. He just didn't slow down.
4. Now you???re getting on the straight. Right now you???re "probably" a little tired. Right here what you should do is relax and concentrate on your form. Lift your knees, pump your arms back and forth. Try to exaggerate your form. When you do this it may feel like you???re bringing your knees up to your hips but most likely they're not. The closer your form is to being good the faster you'll go in the last 100m.
The whole idea of running the 400m is to spread your available energy through out the whole race. You want to avoid hitting the wall for as long as possible. This is Michael Johnson's real race strategy. And if you do a bit a research on how the human body works you'll see why this is the most effective strategy.
-
Participant
Thanks for the very detailed and helpful replies.
I feel like I hit the wall everytime with about 150 meters to go; I think this is because as soon as I get that baton in the 4x400m, I am so nervous / excited that I just go really fast the first 200 then start to die.
Also, am I correct that wearing sprinting spikes and therefore staying on your toes is extremely important throughout the 400? Sometimes at the end my shins are so sore that I feel like I'm going to fall over, but I'm aware that running off your heels is not the best form.
DaGovernor, I had been doing tempo workouts since the beginning of December. I had to stop running for about a week because I have patellatendonitis in both knees. This past Friday, I ran the 4x400m as the anchor on a 160m track. I was really worried because I hadn't run in about a week, but I surprisingly ran well until I reached the 300. That's when everything starting tingling and I felt like I was going to fall over. I ran about a 57, not bad for being injured / running in the pre season.
Every day I've been doing the pushups and crunches, so maybe that helped compensate for my lack of training. Are there any specific drills you guys know of or ways of practicing that will help lower my 400m time? In practice, the sprinters don't start out doing intervals because we don't have a clear track to run on in the winter, so we usually do things like 45 seconds out, 45 seconds back six times. Is there a good way to approach these workouts; I mean, should I try going all out on every rep, or should I start off easy then start going faster as I progress through the workout? I know that in cross country, it helped me to run at full speed early in the workout then just run on fumes basically until we were done. That was a bad thing me thinks my sophomore year because some worse runners would save up until the end then impress my coach by blowing out like 2:20 halves or whatnot.
-
Participant
There are alot of runners that get the baton in the 4 x 4 and feel they have to run like you say you do because of their adrenaline rush. That's just something you have to work on; running your own race.
Yes staying on your toes is extremely important.
If you have been doing tempo workouts since the beginning of December then you need to move to something else. Something faster. Your body has now become adapted to your workouts. You should only do intensive tempo work for 4 weeks at the most. Anymore than that is overkill.
Try doing some split runs or some depletion runs or maybe even some Special Endurance type runs. You should see some improvement in a few weeks. Also, read some of the message boards here at elitetrack.com, you'll find alot of helpful info. Lookup 400m training in the elitetrack search engine. Also, check out 400Stud's message board on his training and my message board will help you out alot also. Both are found in the training journals section. Good luck with your training. And if you need any additional help, let me know.
-
Participant
Anytime dalnet.
-
Participant
dalnet,
Here is something else you could do to help you out with your 400m training. Try something called event runs. All it is is 400m pace training. The way you do it is to:
1. Take your goal time for the 400 this year and subtract it by 75.5%. This is what your target 1st 100 should be.
2. Take the answer and subtract that by 5%. This is your target 2nd 100.
3. Take that answer and add 7% to it. This is your target 3rd 100 time.
4. And finally, take that answer and add 9% to it. This should be your target final 100.
For example, if your goal time for the 400 is 48.00, you'd subtract 75.5% (= 11.76)
Take 11.76 and subtract 5% (= ~11.17)
Take 11.17 and add 7% (= ~11.95)
Take 11.95 and add 9% (= ~13.03)
11.76 + 11.17 (22.93) + 11.95 (34.88) + 13.03 (47.91)
Do workouts geared to your goal times. If you need more info, let me know.
-
Participant
You can do many workouts geared to that. You could do repeat 100s working on each phase of the 400 separately. You could do repeat 200s working on the three 200m phases of the race. You could do repeat 250s to focus on the middle 250 of the race. Like I said, there are many different ways to workout. It just depends on how you wanna attack it.
-
Participant
Yes, in fact it could. Same formula.
-
Participant
You do work on that part of the race everytime you do acceleration training. So you don't need to set aside a separate session geared towards that first 6 seconds.
-
KeymasterDaGov-
I mostly agree, but sometimes I think it's good to run it just as you would in a race…..hard first 50m–>relax–> pick it up again. Also, this very point makes it difficult for me to see why we sometimes so clearly separate the various forms of speed development. If run in the above stated manner, a 400m or even 200m sprint athlete may not necessarily need to run an acc. dev. workout for the week.ELITETRACK Founder
-
Participant
I many ways I agree with you mike. However, SOMETIMES I do believe it is necessary to separate them so get more of a concentration on a particular stimulus.
Viewing 18 reply threads
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.