400 meter training: Historical Approach to the 400 Meter Dash
Continued from Part 2
Many long sprint coaches have either heard about or believed in a philosophy similar to this one:
400 meter training should be broken into four segments, 100 meters each. Each 100 meters is run a certain way, especially the first three. I tell runners to run the first three my way and the last 100 their own way.
I have them run the first 100 very fast. Hence they learn to come off the first curve as relaxed as they can, and they run the backstretch without slowing down, yet without using up too much energy.
The key is the third 100. This is where too many people slow down. Drill into your runners that, when they hit that second curve, they must start to work again. Everybody seems to think this is the place to slow down, so they will have power to come off that last curve and kick the straightaway.
Well, there isn’t anybody that is going to kick in on the last straightaway, because fatigue is setting in. Teach your 400 athletes to run that second curve hard. Also this is not easy to teach. Work on this all year long, on relaxing in that second curve and in that second curve running it fast.
For well over twenty five years, many track coaches have agreed with this assessment of the 400 meter dash. Yet if we asked coaches today what they observe when high school athletes run this event, they will note a clear slowing down at the 200 meter mark. Hence as a result, they will tell their athletes to run “fast but relaxed” through the curve, and they will also say something about maintaining form in the final 100 meters.
400 Metres Training Schedule of Mark Richardson
Mark Ashton Richardson (born 26 July 1972) is a British former athlete who competed mainly in the 400 metres.
He competed for Great Britain in the 1996 Summer Olympics held in Atlanta, United States in the 4 x 400 metre relay where he won the silver medal with his team mates Iwan Thomas, Jamie Baulch and Roger Black. This team set a UK record, 2:56.60, in the process.
At the 1997 World Championships in Athens, Richardson quickly ran the anchor leg for Great Britain in the 4x400m relay, winning the silver medal. His unofficial split time was 43.5. On the 7th January 2010 it was announced that Great Britain’s 1997 World Championship 4x400m relay team are to be awarded the gold medal they were beaten to by a U.S. team which included Antonio Pettigrew, who admitted in 2008 to using performance-enhancing drugs.[1] .
Richardson’s official personal best in the 400m was 44.47.
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Below article is from peakperformance.com
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400 Metres Training Schedule
Mark Richardson was asked in the spring if Michael Johnson could be beaten. He hesitated, and then replied: ‘Well, not at this point in time. He’s untouchable, but in future years it’s a goal to work on’. Who would have thought that, just a few weeks on from that, he would actually beat ‘the untouchable’ (though admittedly he lost when the two met again shortly after)?
Richardson was a member of the British 4 x 400m team that finished second behind the Americans in the 1997 World Champs and the ’96 Olympics. At the Worlds he finished fourth in the final of the individual event, beating new British record holder Iwan Thomas in the process. Now that he has one win over Johnson under his belt, he could well challenge him for gold at Sydney 2000
Richardson was asked about his training schedule, how he prepared for competition and what diet he followed, as well as about vitamins and supplements, and watched one of his track workouts. Here is what he said.
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