this is going to be a pretty boring post about sprint training

 BUT stick around until the end and I will pay my electric bill and renew my vehicle registration!

got back on the track today after about a month-long hiatus. took video of myself.

times were not great so I was frustrated in the moment BUT I also got video and upon watching it back a few times and comparing it to older videos I realized that I'm doing a much better job of extending and straightening my leg as it's coming down into the ground. So that's good. Even while being moody and just trying to run 'hard', my form still noticeably improved.

my big goal for the year is to break 12 seconds in the 100 meters and the biggest form change I'm going to focus on is keeping my leg straight while landing. that's going to make me run 'taller' and also my center of mass will pass over a straight leg faster than a bent squishy leg which equals faster running.

Steps to straighten my leg while sprinting: mentally cue it and practice running with exaggerated form. straight leg one legged hops for distance. sprinting while trying to keep my legs straight. doing can-cans. modifying the speed drills I already do to focus on keeping a straight leg. 

I'm pretty sure the need to bend my legs comes from having weak hamstrings so I'm going to continue strengthening my hamstrings with deadlifts and hamstring curls. also banded kicks.

I'm confident the strength training and drills I'm doing are helping me improve and it's a matter of continuing that work and getting used to sprinting on the track again which I'm confident will come back fairly quickly.

alright time to pay my electric bill...

done

alright time to renew my vehicle registration...

done

I thought I was going to write more about sprinting but I'll end by emphasizing how gratifying it was to see a noticeable improvement in my form. Sprinting is fun but it does feel like beating your head against a wall sometimes trying to figure out how to get better and so for me to take video of myself and identify something worth changing and then actually finding a way to change it feels really good. If I hadn't taken video today I would've been pretty disappointed with my performance even though I can tell just by feel that I'm running differently and have gotten stronger. 

I ran 6.60 for my first flying 50m sprint and I thought to myself 'you're washed up old man. you're done. hang up. it was nice while it lasted but looks like this it.' And I knew that wasn't true but I did think it in the moment. 

 

there's monsters. there's real flesh-and-blood demons and they hide behind power and prestige

 does nationalism or the nation state as a concept help to serve the interests of common people or does it help powerful people further consolidate power?

something about knowing you need to drink more water and then drinking more water and feeling better feels humiliating

 'drink more water' is like the 'do unto others' of health advice.

you need to be reminded of it because you aren't doing it enough but you get reminded so much that it stops feeling necessary so it just becomes background noise until you remember, 'oh yeah. it actually IS super important.' crazy

I take some amount of pride in thinking that I took good care of myself and then you find out you aren't drinking enough water and it's like 'well shooooooot' that's really like step one isn't it?

another simple joy in my life

 people notice something I'm wearing or holding and say, "is that new?"

And then I say,

"HA! New to YOU!"

It's a pretty needlessly rude thing to say to someone who's just trying to make a friendly observation but I like to imagine that I have all sorts of esoteric knowledge and wisdom that I've known for years and is only just now apparent to wide-eyed green-horned first-rodeo individuals.

Maybe don't do this one. It never gets a laugh or a good reaction.

I will keep doing it though.

actually, go HARD

 One piece of running wisdom that I've accepted for a long time but recently started to question is the idea that most of training should be done with a controlled approach. If you watch videos of athletes and their coaches doing workouts you'll often hear the coach saying that the most important thing is that they stay relaxed--"RELAX! RELAX!!" The whole video is them screaming "RELAX!!" They'll say that the only time they want to go 100% is during a race or maybe a few key workouts leading up to a big race. 

"RELAX! RELAX!"

The idea is that going too hard too often can fry the nervous system and slow recovery between sessions. It's like there's a continuum between Low Intensity, High Volume that Produces Little Stimulus for Adaptation and High Intensity Low Volume that Produces  High Stimulus for Adaptation. And most training plans seem to want to aim for like 80% Intensity. That seems to be where most people can train the longest without breaking down and still get a fruitful response. 

It all seems very sound and there's plenty of anecdotal and clinical evidence to support it but something really irks me about coaches preaching RELAX! and DON'T PUSH in workouts. Yesterday I was reading this tweet from Steve Magness about how the way the brain and body perceive discomfort is super subjective. If you tell an athlete to relax and go easy, then you're priming their system to notice any discomfort and it tends to make the reps feel harder. By the same token, races where athletes push as hard as they can can feel relatively easy. You're priming the body to ignore as much as discomfort as possible for the sake of performance. 

Caveat: it is absolutely the case that you can assign 4 reps in a workout and an athlete goes way too hard on the first one and can't run the last 3 reps with any quality. But I would argue that thinking about relaxing and staying controlled and patient isn't the only way you can achieve smart pacing. You can try hard and still pace well.