AY Honors/Track & Field/Answer Key
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Sprints are races where the runner tries to go as fast as humanly possible. Biological factors that go primarily into a sprint are: exclusive use of fast twitch muscles, adrenaline, and anaerobic respiration.
Notice: in the context of these articles, a minimally trained runner can loosely be termed as a person that has trained conistently for over 10 weeks, and is running the race while in condition from this training. Results from people that have not done this do not reflect their potential.
Short Sprints
60 m and below
- This is an all-out sprint. It is mainly run indoors. It's an interesting measure of athletic ability, as this is roughly the distance required for a human to reach maximum speed and can effectively be run without breathing. Most runners find this race too short to mean much. It is more popular for other sports (e.g. speed testing for American football, although 40 yards is more often used as a speed test in that sport).
100 m
- This is the classic sprint distance. It is the premier sprint event on an outdoor 400 m track. It takes place on the straight-away section of the track (there are no turns in this race). Many 60 m prodigies lose to seasoned 100 m runners, as training needs to be done in order to maintain form and power through this race. Beginners can actually become winded after running this distance. Often, the world-record holder in this race is considered "the world's fastest person". Indoors, this race holds little importance as the curvature of the track takes away from the athletes' ability to perform.
- World Record progression 100 m men
150 m
- A very informal distance. Used as common training distance. Often races between top 100 m and 200 m runners are staged on this distance. The last famous duel was held between 1996 Olympic Champions Donovan Bailey (Canada) and Michael Johnson (USA).
200 m
- A very interesting distance. It begins on the curve, and ends on the straightaway. A combination of highspeed curve and straightaway technique are needed to successfully run the race. To most trained runners, this is a pure power race. A slightly shorter race (but run on a straight track) was the first recorded event at the Ancient Olympics.
Long Sprints
300 m
- Another informal distance. Also used as a common training distance
400 m
- Exactly once around the track on the inside lane. A successful runner will need an efficient stride and superior speed, and a small amount of non-fast twitch muscles to be competitive. For career 400 m runners this becomes a prolonged high speed sprint.
500 m
- More popular than 300 and 150. Strict 400 m and 800 m runners face off at this distance and come away satisfied.
The most common distance for rowing races (2 km) are also called sprints.
See also:
