Elijah Ferguson

I'm tired of hearing that aerobic work makes kids slow. Especially in 400 training. The same idea that refuses to let a 400 kid touch a tempo run is the idea that explains why so many of those kids tie up at the 300m mark like they're running through wet cement. "Too much aerobic work would steal their speed." Cool. I agree leg speed matters in a 400. But here's the idea I want dead. The Aerobic Tax. The notion that every aerobic mile withdraws from some imaginary speed account. That tempo runs dull the kick. That a kid who ran a steady 4-mile on Monday somehow can't fire on Friday. That a 400 athlete who builds an engine in the offseason will somehow show up in April with no top end. It doesn't work that way. You don't lose speed because you ran long. You lose speed because you stopped training speed. But more than that. Your kid isn't dying at 300 because he's TOO AEROBIC. He's dying at 300 because there's no aerobic floor underneath the speed. The race is 49 seconds. He has speed for 29 of them. The other 20 are aerobic whether you trained them or not. Pull up the training log. Find the tempo runs. Find anything that built the engine that has to carry the speed across the line. If it isn't there, the kid isn't dying because he ran fast. He's dying because nobody built what he needed to FINISH fast. The 400 isn't a speed event with an aerobic problem. It's an aerobic event with a speed finish.