Coaching Track & Field Successfully - 400 Meters

This is a Sample Chapter: 400 METERS from Coaching Track & Field Successfully by Mark Guthrie.

The 400 Meters

Athletes who specialize in the 400 meters can be the cornerstone of a successful track program. They can provide good coverage in the 100, 200, 400, 4 x 100, 4 x 200, and 4 x 400 events, and in an emergency, either at the 800 meters or a 4 x 800 relay. Many slower short distance sprinters can find a new home in the 400-meter group where they experience newfound success. An easy way to predict a male runner’s potential in the 400 meters is to take his best open 200-meter time, double it, and add 3.5 seconds. To predict a female runner’s time, add 4.5 to 5.0 seconds to the doubled 200-meter time. As an example, look at your 200-meter runners who run 23.0. Apply the formula, and you have a candidate who could run 400 meters in 49.5 in an open race. Four athletes of this speed in a 4 x 400 relay could produce a time of 3:18.0 without even subtracting time for being on the roll as a relay member. These two numbers would most likely score higher at your conference and state series meets than a 23.0 in the 200 meters would.

The reason most sprinters run and hide when their name is mentioned in the same breath as a 400-meter race is that they are afraid of the pain they think is involved. Or, sometimes, they have been thrown into the race without being trained for the event and have thus had a very negative experience. In addition to preparing athletes for this event, make sure you really sell this event. Do it in a positive and enthusiastic manner, using current examples of key people such as Michael Johnson and taking advantage of the attention he has brought to it.

Conditioning for the 400 Meters

The key to success in the 400 is in the training for the event. Athletes should never run faster than race pace during training; they should build strength, and they should use relaxation to maintain speed or reduce the diminishment of speed. We know that athletes who are working reasonably hard will encounter lactic acid build up once they have run for 40 seconds. You’ll never need to have them run faster than 400-meter speed since the main energy sources used in the 400 meters are the ATP-PC (adenosine triphosphate-phosphocreatine) and lactic acid systems. Therefore, all of your work will be to maximize the development of these systems; this does not involve running at speeds faster than race pace.

Take into consideration the time versus the distance that is covered in 300- and 350meter efforts. A slower 400-meter runner still incurs lactate at 40 seconds, but it occurs several meters before a faster runner would incur lactate. Therefore, the time run at 400meter pace is more important in some cases than the meters run. For example, an effective workout might be 3 to 4 X 300 at race pace plus 5.0 seconds, with a walking recovery of five minutes between runs. A 48-second 400meter runner should arrive at the 300-meter mark at 41 seconds, while the 52-second runner would arrive at the same distance in 44 seconds, having thus been in lactate 3 seconds longer while running the same workout. The cumulative effect of being over the lactate threshold longer is much greater for the slower runner, who therefore requires a different workout the next day.

This logic also applies to girls, who still arrive at lactate after 40 seconds of sustained work. But in the case of the aforementioned workout, a 60-second 400-meter female runner would cover the 300 meters in 50 seconds-in other words, she would be in lactate for 10 seconds, as opposed to the 1.0 or 3.0 seconds that the male runner was exposed to lactate. Therefore, when determining whether to base your practices on meters or time, consider your runners: While a 48-second runner makes it to 300 meters at 41 seconds, an equal effort for a 60-second runner places them at 240 meters.

The athletes’ ability to remain relaxed during the 400-meter run is strengthened by running 600-, 500-, and 450-meter runs at paces that range from their race pace plus 15 seconds early in the season to their race pace plus 4 seconds later in the season, followed by a IS-minute walking recovery and hill work. This workout provides the needed endurance work to complete the 400-meter race in good running posture while staying relaxed through the finish line.

Over time, I have assigned a race-pace plus time system to athletes’ workout speeds to have consistency in the tempos that the athletes run. I then run practices by ability groups to eliminate racing in practice. Samples of this concept are demonstrated in the sample training program shown in table 7.2.

Along with the running portion of these sample workouts, I have athletes lift two to three times per week in the early season and taper off the weight training completely as we get into late season. The workouts shown in table 7.2 are for a runner with a 47-second personal record in the 400-meter run. To modify the sample workout shown in table 7.2 for a junior high group, reduce the number of repetitions as well as the speed of the runs, based on your athletes’ 400-meter race pace.

Warm-Up Change-Up

It used to be that our 400-meter group would do 3 to 6 X 100 meter accelerations during practice. One year, one of our runners, who had a history of hamstring problems, ran slightly faster 200 meters than normal in place of these accelerations. At the NCAA Championships, he felt the best in the race and ran a lifetime, outdoor personal best, while our other runners felt a little heavy. During the next couple of years, I experimented with this difference and had the same results. We eventually adopted this change into our program and have since had fewer hamstring injuries.

Racing Tactics

When planning strategy for the 400 meters, remember that runners never make up in the last 200 meters what they lost or sacrificed in the first 200 meters. A classic example of this maxim is the 1988 Olympic final in Seoul, Korea, when Butch Reynolds got out slow, tried to make a move over the final 200 meters, and never got up to win the race. On the other hand, the two accepted ways to achieve success in the 400-meter race are to run an evenly split race or to run within one second of a personal best 200-meter open for the initial 200 meters and then run off of that tempo through the finish.

Evenly paced racing is very difficult to teach and even harder to execute. This racing style asks a 48-second 400-meter runner to run 12 seconds per 100 meters, for splits of 12.0, 24.0, 36.0, and 48.0. In theory, the equal dis bursement of effort should physiologically produce the optimal result; however many emotions, psychological effects, and physiological factors are involved with a successful race. I support-especially for younger runners-getting into a fast rhythm over the first 50 meters, getting into a free-wheeling rhythm that allows for quick turnover without seeming to work as hard, running the first 200 meters within 1 second of a personal best, then beginning an acceleration over the next 100 meters to reduce the loss of speed related to being in a curve, which should then set up an athlete for a strong finish.

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