Here we are going to break the fitness needed for sprinting
into two distinct categories.
Firstly, you need to get a good level of general fitness or conditioning
done in order to be able to do the more specific sprint work, without undue
risk of injury or illness and in order to be able to do this training over
a period of time.
Secondly, we'll look at speed endurance, which is the maintainence of a high
level of speed over the duration of a race.
General Conditioning
This is achieved by a degree of aerobic work, concentrated early in the winter
(from about Sept - Nov) for those wishing to compete well during the summer.
Activities such as circuit training and steady running (generally of no
more than 3 miles, but at a reasonable speed) are important and generally
used by athletes. However, it is also perfectly reasonable to get this sort
of fitness from cross training, eg. a game of squash, cycling, a game of
football etc, so long as the injury risks associated with these are recognised.
As mentionned, this work is generally done early in the year, but should
be maintained at a lower level throughout the training year.
