Speed endurance and technique

Have you considered how much your speed endurance and running technique impact your running performance? Especially with sprinters that seem to accelerate towards the end of a race, they are actually slowing down at a rapid pace due to their muscles fatiguing.

The only way to overcome this is to build your speed endurance.

If you look at some of the best sprinters or runners in general, you will see that when they were at their peak performance, they had a phenomenal amount of speed endurance.

For example.

Usain Bolt in the years leading up to the Beijing Olympics where he broke the 100 and 200m world record was actually training as a 400m sprinter and clocked 45 seconds for the race around the track.

He said it in the video below.

Michael Johnson trained mainly as a 400m sprinter and broke both the 200m and 400m world records.

Wade Van Niekerk trains as a 400m athlete and holds the world record for the event, but has run sub-20 seconds for the 200m.

Speed endurance with the right technical training works.

It allows the athlete to hold their form and to execute more horizontal force at a higher intensity during the race.

What’s needed for athletes to execute this?

Athletes need to factor in speed endurance training into their program and they must excel in the speed endurance events so their muscles can execute more power for longer during the race.

What kind of training is required?

Realistically, you are looking at speed endurance over 200m, 300m, 400m and 600m to maintain speed.

Doing the training at no more than 95% of the maximum speed is key to building the strength endurance. This means the athlete needs to know what split time to run in order to maintain their technique over the distance.

For example, if you run 10 seconds for the 100m, you would aim to do speedwork at 10.5s for 95% intensity.

If you run 25 seconds for the 200m, you would aim to do speedwork at 26.25s for 95% intensity.

Get your best time and multiply it by the following. (You can use this calculator)

Intensity	Time multiplier
95%	Multiply your best time by 105%
90%	Multiply your best time by 110%
80%	Multiply your best time by 120%
70%	Multiply your best time by 130%

You can also use this calculator to get the speed metric that you need to maintain based on your personal best time.

100m time	Intensity time
10 seconds	10.5s
11 seconds	11.55s
12 seconds	12.6s
13 seconds	13.65s
14 seconds	14.7s
15 seconds	15.75
200m time
21 seconds	22.05s
24 seconds	25.20s
27 seconds	28.35
30 seconds	31.5s
400m
50 seconds	52.5s
60 seconds	63s