He showed numerous videos of his experiences with Linford Christie’s group where his daughter Monique is now training, and related numerous interesting observations of the content and intensity of UK sprint training. One of the key points was his discovery that for much of the summer season, when many speedsters employ several rest days in their program, Linford’s group have many weeks when they train seven days per week, even performing a difficult set of circuits the evening prior to racing.

Linford, himself, was famous on the European racing circuit for his “Christie Circuits”. When those professionals travel from meet to meet, they often arrive in their hotel without time to get to a stadium for training. Linford would perform his circuit in his hotel room, and race the next day.

Chris will journey to the Caribbean next month and his discoveries there will be highly enlightening to us all. Big thanks to big Chris Williams.

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-       At what age is it appropriate to begin strength training?

-       How many times per week should I train?

-       What number of sprint reps would I be expected to complete in a session?

-       What are the best exercises to develop speed?

-       What is meant by “Toys for the Boys” and how effective are the training aids on the market?

-       Can you be too flexible?

-       For speed and agility, which are the primary muscle groups to focus upon, and how do I train them?

-       What types of exercises can we adopt for left-brain, right-brain enhancement as applied to sport?

-       What recommendations do you have if I sweat heavily in training?

-       What should be present in my meals while developing strength?

-       What should I do if I prefer not to have breakfast

-       Why do I tend to lose weight just prior to major competitions?

-       Sometimes I don’t sleep well. What should I do about it?

-       Can you have too much Vitamin C?

-       Should I Use amino acids and creatine?

-       What are some key nutrition protocols to follow during the heaviest weeks of preparation?

-       What is LTAD?

-       What hope is there for those who mature late?

-       What is PHV and what relationship does it have with optimizing peak strength levels?

-       What have Germans found that combining Marlborough’s Green Lipped Mussels and Sauvignon Blanc grapes got to do with anti-oxidants?

-       What have light adaptation, stereoscopic vision and dynamic visual acuity got to do with relay running?

What other matters concern you? We will publish them and provide professional answers.

Email: kerry@nzspeed.co.nz

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“Every Sunday when I’m in Kingston we get a football game going. There’s no special protection for me, like a no-tackling rule, it’s proper competitive. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise. You get roughed up, you fall over, whatever, but I don’t worry about getting hurt. You can’t close yourself off from everything and stay in all day.

I try not to get found out by Coach, though, because he wouldn’t be happy about me playing. He came past me on Sunday when I was going to football, but I kept my window up. It’s tinted so he couldn’t see me, even though he knew it was my car. When we met up at training the following day he said, ‘I saw you going to play football’. I replied, me, Coach? Other people drive my van, you know. Are you sure it was me? What was I wearing? He couldn’t answer that. We both knew he knew, but he couldn’t prove it”.

“Coach told me to learn to lose, because by doing so you could figure out what you needed to do to win. There was always a reason for losing, and I realised I was looking behind almost as soon as I started every race. This was slowing me down and costing vital time”.

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Linford Christie: “If they were gossip columnists then fair enough, but they call themselves sports writers”.

Michael Johnson: Training Tips:

1.     Strive for Balance – Don’t let your goals smother your personal life, your relationships, or your health. Being successful without being well rounded is a waste. Do something tangible: add another hour of family time; go to the movies with your friends once per week.

2.     Regain Your Perspective – This is one of those moments when you need to assess your journey so far. Give yourself time to think or to meditate or just shut the machine off for a while.

3.     Listen to Your Body – It will tell you when you are going too fast or when you need something you’re not getting. Burnout sets off alarms in your body as loud as those on a Mercedes in Los Angeles.

4.     Look for New Challenges – Make sure they are the kind that keeps you sharp, that exercise your mind and force you to continue using self-discipline, organisation, and consistency. Those transferable habits need to be worked on like muscles.

5.     Simplify – trim the fat from your life and seek the motivation behind your chase, the 10-year-old’s reason why you started on this journey in the first place.

Tom Tellez – Coached Carl Lewis throughout his career. In 1998, he retired as head coach at the University of Houston and was replaced by Leroy Burrell, one of his former athletes – though he stayed on as a volunteer and coaches to this day. Houston’s athletes train now at the Tom Tellez track, which forms part of the Carl Lewis International Complex.

Calvin Smith – multi winner of the World Champs for 200m,finished fourth in the Seoul Games 100m. He lives outside Tampa, Florid, where he is a social worker. His son, also Calvin, is a 400m runner who competed at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He has never been implicated in any doping case and says he feels like the moral winner of the 1988 Olympic gold medal, originally won by Ben Johnson, later awarded to Carl Lewis, with Linford Christie third.

The Legend of the 1948 Olympics, Fanny Blankers-Koen of Netherlands, placed sixth in the high jump at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In London in ’48, she won gold in the 100m, 200m, 80m hurdles, and 4x100m relay. Her first national record was set while a teenager in 1935 over 800m with 2:29.0. She married her coach Jan Blankers who was, at 14.69m, an international triple jumper.

The first athlete to use spiked shoes in races was Williams Curtis at an indoor meet held at New York’s empire Skating Rink in 1868.

The last white athlete to win the Olympic 100m, Alan Wells of Scotland, beat the Cuban Sylvio Leonard in 10.25s by 1/100^th of a second, but he reacted to the gun 3/100ths faster. The three medalists averaged over 28 years old. The Americans boycotted (like NZ, except our canoeists and a modern pentathlete) because, can you believe, President Carter was unimpressed with Russian invading Afghanistan. Stanley Floyd won the USA Trials in 10.26, with teenaged Carl Lewis 4^th – he would have been in the relay had they attended, which was won by Russia in38.26, just edging Poland by one foot. Wells subsequently beat the best Americans in Europe later that season.

Wilma Rudolph, USA, won gold at the Rome Olympics, 1960, in 100m, 200m, 4×100 relay. Peter Radford, UK, gained bronze in the men’s 100m. Both had the crippling polio disease as children.

Tommy Smith and John Carlos were sent home from the Mexico Olympics in disgrace after their gold and bronze 200m performances, split in silver by Australian pastor, Peter Norman. Their gloved-fists, raised in protest on the dias at treatment of blacks at home, has been immortalized at their San Jose State University with a $300,000 sculpture that stands over six metres high.

Marita Koch of (East) Germany once held the world record for 200 and 400m and still holds the 400m at 47.60 set in 1978. At 15 years old, she ran 12.2, 25.5, and 60.3s and could beat many boys her own age. She was the first woman to break the 22secs barrier with 21.71s. The first to break 11 seconds electrically was another DDR athlete, Marlies Oelsner (later Gohr), when she ran 10.88 in Dresden. Brigitte Berendonk’s book “Doping”(1992) outlines in detail the drugs taken by athletes of that regime, in those years.

Maurice Green displays a tattoo saying G.O.A.T. (Greatest of all Time). After he’s been outed as failing a test that was never originally made public, shouldn’t it just read Goat.

A matching tatt that twice-caught Justin Gatlin could have, based on his boasting, could be – FIGJAM (“Far-out I’m Good Just Ask Me”). Or he could have “Another Goat”.

It’s bad enough when people with nothing to do with sport carry the Olympic Torch in the relay each four years, such as actors, politicians, etc., and Olympians and Olympic medalists miss out with their applications, but how about this: the leader of California’s chapter of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang carried it in 1984!

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