200m Splits from USA National Championships

Once again, many thanks to Andy Ferrara who complies these splits which he does on a VOLUNTARY basis!

I wrote about 200m splits way back in 2008 when Usain Bolt ran 19.30 in Beijing 2008, followed by 2009 Berlin with his 19.19 World Records.

If you take away 1 full second for acceleration out of the blocks, as referenced in the Valeri Borzov – Training Procedures in Sprinting article, then you can clearly see the differential in the 1st and 2nd 200m splits. (Some argue that differential is really 1.09 seconds, but we’ll save that debate for another time)

You will never run the first 100m all out (hence the speed reserve), plus there is always a slowdown over the final 100m straightaway (hence the speed endurance training component, which is core element of this Blog!).

Michael Johnson’s 19.32 from the 1996 Atlanta Olympics demonstrated the best speed endurance, his splits were 10.12 + 9.20, so Johnson still has the fastest second half ever recorded.  (The -2.3 headwind doesn’t help either!)

Finally,we can’t forget about Yohan Blake’s 19.26 back in 2011:

Look at the incredible speed endurance!

My theoretical calculations for 100m and 200m is doubled your best 100m time +/- 0.2 seconds. This is a good indicator on what you need to improve on the respective events, or to determine which is your “better” event.  Here is Usain Bolt’s 100m WR:

9.58 x 2 = 19.16
19.16 +/- 0.2 = 18.96 to 19.36 range.

However, don’t count out Wayde van Niekerk!  Can he run splits of 10.00 and 9.00? 9.95 and 9.05?  Sub 19 is a monster task, and I’m not sure we’ll see it for quite a long time!