Close and Getting Closer: Canadian Championships 100m

Well, we accomplished what we set out to do. By we, I mean myself and my sprint athlete Nathan Taylor. We wanted to make the 100m final at Canadian Championships and put down a good time to help with funding for next year. Nathan qualified for the final and finished 8th overall in the final. In the semi-finals of the 100, Nathan finished in a time of 10.36 seconds, beating his personal best by 0.02 seconds. He had run 10.32 in the heats, but the time was assisted by a 3.1 m/s wind (2.0 m/s or less is allowable).

It has been a long time coming for Nathan. Back in 2001 at the Canada Games, Nathan ran 10.38 seconds to win the 100m and set a new Canada Games record. Obviously, he thought it was the start of things to come. Perhaps by 2004, he would be ready for the Olympic Games. Unfortunately for him, his career did not blossom as envisioned. His collegiate career was plagued with mediocre times and lacklustre performances. He was lucky to run faster than 10.70 seconds. Nathan did manage to secure some high performance grades and move on to a masters degree at Simon Fraser University.

I first started working with Nathan back in September 2005. I think we both knew that he was capable of much better than 10.7's and 10'8's. It was just a matter of getting some quality speed work under his belt. Watching him run some simple accelerations and move the weights in the weight room, you could see that he had a good amount of fast twitch fibre. It was now up to me to make sure that his fast twitch muscle were trained appropriately. Short acceleration work, with a solid weight program and some technical adjustments would be the solution to his four year drought.

Needless to say, the indoor season started off well in January 2006 with a personal best time in the 60m of 6.74 seconds. This result was attained through acceleration work to 40m in a hallway on a roll-out track surface. Not bad. Once we moved outdoors, training continued to be a challenge with poor weather conditions and headwinds playing havoc with our plans. We seemed to be stuck in the 10.6 zone, whether because of rain, wind, cold weather or a bad combination of all of the above. The one time when we had perfect conditions (Tuscon, AZ), the timing system broke down. But, we continued to plug away, with the faith that we were on the right track -- but just in the wrong competitions.

On Friday, August 4th, 2006, everything came together with Nathan's 10.32 and 10.36 runs. Unfortunately, those runs had a profound impact on Nathan's nervous system, and he was flat for the final, running a 10.58 second 100m with no wind. Regardless, we are happy with his efforts and know that he is capable of running faster. Next season, we simply have to make a better effort to seek out optimal conditions for both training and competitions. It will require considerably more funding, an area that we must work on in the off-season. However, we certainly have much to look forward to.

dh