Pre-Race Stretch Pre-Race Stretch
Images: Duane Hart Sporting Images

Pushing the lactate level

“I train five-to-six days a week and the majority of those days I’ll do double sessions. Normally, my days start at 11am with a track session, and that session varies depending on whether we’re in race season or not. Base training during the off-season involves a lot of the longer stuff. Most people don’t realise that to run 100m fast, you’ve got to be fit, your lactate threshold has to be very high. A lot of people don’t understand that, so they don’t train their body to cope at that lactate threshold. Most of our off-season training will be about pushing that threshold. A popular session is running a 400, 300, 200 and 100 at roughly 80 per cent effort with a short recovery between each rep. Time-wise I’d be looking at running the 400 in 52-54 seconds, the 300 in 35-36 seconds, the 200 in 23 and after all that I’d want to be running the 100 in under 11. It’s very tough. I also do a lot of hill running. There’s a good hill near my Essendon athletics track which is roughly 120m long, so I’ll do ten reps up that hill at about 80 per cent effort.”

Sharpening up

“In-season my focus moves to shorter distances. I’ll work a lot of starts over 20 to 40m. And the recoveries between each run will be quite long. My coach, Adam Larcom, will have a video camera, or a high-speed camera that takes ten shots per second, and after each rep we’ll have a good look at the images. We’ll really analyse my technique – that way I can adjust it for my next rep. Adam really emphasises this technical examination during my reps. It’s best doing it between reps because we can adjust something, then see how that adjustment impacts the next rep.

“If I’m doing starts, my run-throughs will normally be over 20 to 40m. If we’re working on the middle parts of the race, then the run-throughs will be up around 60-80m. The number of reps I do always depends on where we are in the season. If we’re, say, two weeks out from competition, then I’ll be doing no more than four-to-six reps. But if we’re eight weeks out from competition, then I’ll be up around eight-to-ten reps for the longer run-throughs and 15 reps for the starts.

“Often my coach will lift the distances, just to keep working that lactate threshold. For these sessions I’ll do reps over 150m and 200m. I’ll also occasionally have a session where I do a one-off 300. Over these longer distances, the times are all indicators of what sort of form I’m in. So, for the 300, I’d be looking at a time of 33 seconds. Over 150m I’d be looking at the 15-to-16-second mark. At that speed I’d probably do five reps out of the blocks.”