AY Honors/Track & Field/Answer Key

The 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.

Common (and not so common) distances

60m and below

This is an all out sprint. It is mainly run indoors. It's an interesting measure of athetlic ability, as this is roughly the distance required for a human to reach maximum speed, it can effectively be run without breathing. Most runners find this race too short to mean much. More popular for other sports (speed testing for american football).

100m

This is the classic sprint distance. It is the premier sprint event on an outdoor 400m track. It takes place on the straight-away section of the track (there are no turns in this race). Many 60m prodigies get beaten by seasoned 100m runners, as training needs to be done in order to maintain form and power through this race. Beginners can actually get winded after running this distance. Often, the world record holder in this race is considered "the world's fastest man". Indoors, this race holds little importance as the curvature of the track really takes away from the athletes ability to perform.
World Record progression 100 m men

150m

A very informal distance. Used as common training distance. Often races between top 100m and 200m runners are staged on this distance.The last famous dual was held between 1996 Olympic Champions Donovan Bailey (Can)and Mikael Johnson (USA).

200m

A very interesting distance. It begins on the curve, and ends on the straightaway. A combination of highspeed curve and straight away technique are needed to successfully run the race. To most trained runners, this is a pure power race.

Long Sprints

300m

Another informal distance. Also used as a common training distance

400m

A glorious race. Exactly once around the track. 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 400m runners this becomes a prolonged high speed sprint.

500m

more popular than 300 and 150. Strict 400m and 800m runners face off at this distance and come away satisfied.

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