Can I run faster at 34 than 17?

Going to sign up for an 800m race in July. I can also enter the 200m that starts 20 mins later. Is there any point in this - could I still sprint close to my best, or would the 800 have just wiped me out? Never tried sprinting after a hard 800 before.

It's all good training.

you have an age discrepancy. you also seem to be confusing improving speed as you age, with losing speed but maybe being able to even it out with being fitter. and no sprinter is usually training or describing what they do in miles per week or tempos.

someone trying to run the open quarter faster becomes a dedicated sprinter and does sprint workouts. IMO distance mileage will only take away top end speed needed to chase TF times, and encourage you to groove runs at steady pace. now, to be fair, plenty of distance guys are pretty quick at 400, 800, etc. but to me they are often working a trade off. their race is longer. they want to run steady splits in their longer race. they give up a smidgen of pure speed to be better at 3000 or so.

you want to break a personal record at 400 to me you need to drop the distance stuff for a bit, work on starts, work on the parts of a sprint race, do sprinter-length intervals, and get back the 1-2 seconds that distance running takes away off your top end. to me it always took a couple weeks after XC to get back the fastest gears. and i was a natural sprinter.

to clarify, no one is getting "faster" with age. they might be getting "fitter" and able to complete a faster time, if they were lazy or not really focused on a distance before. but strictly speaking you should have had better raw goods age 20-25 and be losing foot speed. but 60 is like what i ran in 7th grade so you can maybe get that just being a fitter adult.

In pure speed terms, yes, we don't get faster in top speed, but we can hold it longer as we build speed endurance over the years.

This week:

Mon: 6.3mi easy

Tue: 5*100m strides around 16s, then 5k tempo in 21:45. 7.1mi total

Wed: 5.2mi easy

Thur: 3*100m (15s), 5*200m (35, 34, 34, 35, 34), around 3m rest (200m walk). 4.2mi total

Fri: 5.5mi easy

Sat: 4mi easy

Sun: 3.5mi easy, plus 6*50m strides practicing 800m pace and 400m starts

Total = 36mi

Solid week. Paced the Tue tempo perfectly, and think I could have run it faster (first thing in morning and hot). Thur session was weird - the 100m in 15s felt way easier than the 200m in 34-35s. Good practice for the races coming up though. Next week will be lower in mileage because of the races on Tue and Fri.

Race reports/week gone by

Mon: Rest

Tue: 400m race in 68.5

Wed: 6.3mi easy

Thur: Rest

Fri: 800m race in 2:32

Sat: 7mi easy plus 4*100m strides

Sun: 5km tempo in 21:05, 6.5mi total

Total: 25mi

Some bad news - woke up with a cold on Monday, then the 400m race caused a big flare-up of asthma which meant I've been coughing/wheezing all week. Am now keeping a diary of peak flow and inhaler usage, likely will be prescribed a stronger inhaler next week. Likely means the races this week were slower than I could do, but it's a start.

Happy with the 400m execution, if not the time. Felt like I paced it perfectly.

800m was great apart from the last 150m, where I seemed to let the race go by me. Think I could have broken 2:30 if I'd sprinted properly (was in second and 2 people went by me in the last 100m, think I could have hung with them). The 400 split was 71-73, not sure precisely. Windy and rainy conditions, so think I'm probably in 2:28 or so shape right now in a good race - get this asthma sorted and maybe I can close in on 2:25 by the end of the year. Decent rust-buster, but could have gone better.