Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Track workouts

Last night ran the team track workout on my own so that I could go play corporate later. I have never been fond of the longer distances. The workout was 2x200, 3x300, 4x400, 3x300, 2x200. I ran 35, 36, 60, 63, 63, 86, 87, 88, and then blew off the last 400 so I would be able to finish the workout, then 65, 68, blew off the last 300, then 37, 38. When I got home (10 minutes from the track), I was sweating profusely, and the nanny observed that I was beet red. I definitely still felt a little ill. Granted, it was also pretty hot and humid at the time, but still.

As I get older (38 and going), these longer distances really take their toll on me. I remember back in the early 90's when we were doing 4x3x400 and I would be spinning off 73-4's for every single 400. That is frankly inconceivable to me now. My longer distance times have slowly grown over the years. The biggest positive change in my conditioning was when Bryan Doo joined DoG in 2002(?). He is an excellent personal trainer now working with the Boston Celtics, and he ran agility workouts for us on Thursday nights (track on Tuesday). We were finally doing workouts that satisfied my requirements, which were enhancing quickness and short sprinting. Since then, we have continued to do the agility workouts, and they have definitely helped extend my career.

Interestingly enough, in the last few years, my personal performance at Nationals has continued to improve. I attribute this to the more useful conditioning due to the agilities workouts, the usual veteran wiliness, and because I have been throwing fewer long throws (fewer cuts, team de-emphasis, who knows). The competition with Wicks in the early aughts helped also as we competed for fewest turnovers, who could get through a day at Nationals without a turnover, etc.

8 Comments:

Blogger Alex de Frondeville said...

Ladder work (stepping through ladders in various permutations), plyometrics, resisted running, jump rope, basically a hodgepodge of stuff that does not involve running anything longer than maybe 10 yards, but is more geared to explosiveness, quickness, etc. We have a document that emcompasses all of the various things we might do over a season, and a workout will combine a number of the exercises with various breaks.

2:01 PM, August 10, 2005  
Blogger Eric Zaslow said...

I just read about your times from the early nineties.
In other news, I've heard that age affects memory.

10:08 PM, August 10, 2005  
Blogger Alex de Frondeville said...

Ahhh, Zaz, I know it's hard to believe, but there once was a time when I was still a hungry player trying to prove himself post Titanic-Earth Atomizer merger, and I was actually young, and slim(er), and the team was much more focused on these conditioning things.

Now I'm just an old decrepit has-been trying to hold on...

9:22 AM, August 11, 2005  
Blogger parinella said...

http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/lec_lun/2004/fair-040407.pdf
is titled "A Comparison of Aging Effects Across Athletic Events". Although it talks more about longer distances, there is still enough to figure out what your sprints should be. There is some logarithmic decline in your max speed beginning at about age 33. If indeed you were running a 73 earlier in your life, then your current equivalent at age 38 is a 78.5. Other changes, estimated:
40: 5.2 to 5.6
100: 12.5 to 13.4
(the above are max speeds, the below will be workout times)
200: 33 to 35.5
400: 73 to 78.5
1600: 6:30 to 6:59

Equations:
log t = c1 + c2*age
c2=.0063
c1 = 1.5

(I think I had to make some adjustments to these constants from the paper because they were geared towards the 10k and marathon.)

Whether or not Alex is deluding himself in thinking how fast he was, I concur that there is a real change with age that is not related to level of conditioning.

And I'm not sure that I agree with your statement that the team used to be more focused on conditioning. There was indeed more peer pressure to do the workouts as a group and do well in them, and we seemed to do more sprints during practice, but the general banter and schedule today seem to show that the team emphasizes conditioning and working out more than playing ultimate.

10:37 AM, August 11, 2005  
Blogger parinella said...

Ok, for those calculating at home, I had set up a spreadsheet that used 33 as the age of decay, and I fixed c2 at .0063 and let c1 vary with the distance, setting it based on the age 33 time for each distance. For the times listed above, c1 was .51 for the 40, 1.31 for the 200, and 1.62 for the 400.

10:48 AM, August 11, 2005  
Blogger Alex de Frondeville said...

That is correct. While there is more of a focus on conditioning (and lack thereof) today, the track workouts back then were far larger and we pushed each other harder. There is more of an awareness now of the impact of conditioning and the edge it can provide (or miss), whereas back then, it was just something that was done. Rah, rah, let's run a lot.

Also, keep in mind those are maximum speeds in Jim's formula. It is one thing to see your maximum speed drop with age. The maximum speed over 4 or 12 400s in a short time frame is going to drop even more. Granted, my conditioning could be better right now, and I bet I could probably get these times down to 80 or so if I had to, but fortunately we are moving to the shorter distances that I like better...

11:20 AM, August 11, 2005  
Blogger parinella said...

The maximum speed over 4 or 12 400s in a short time frame is going to drop even more.

But why? Are you saying that it is a necessary consequence of aging that your ability to do a workout at, say, 90% of your max has to drop too?

They do say that your max allowable heart beat for a workout drops with age, though.

1:22 PM, August 11, 2005  
Blogger Eric Zaslow said...

Jim, max speeds and workout speeds are different.
It does not follow that workout speeds should drop
by the same amount as max speeds. For most,
a 400 in a workout is not very close to our max 400.
Workout speeds depend more on recovery ability.
Max speeds depend more on muscle strength and
anaerobic performance.

[Of course there is also the question of how your
effort declines or increases as a function of age --
as well as a myriad of other factors (amount of sleep,
curmudgeonliness, ...).]

The good news is that you can find a new study, get
a new formula and generate lots more spreadsheets!

3:06 PM, August 12, 2005  

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