I've got a sophomore kid who has never run track before. He came out for the team after playing soccer in the winter. When he first came out, he wanted to run with the distance group.
After one day, the distance coach told me, "this kid looks like a legit sprinter". So taught him a relay handoff and put him on the 3rd leg of a 4x1, where he proceeded to bring our team from back of the pack up to first in our season opening invite. We won our heat and were second overall in that meet. The next week, we moved him to anchor on the varsity 4x1, where he ran down a few guys at another medium size invitational.
He told me that he still wanted to run with the distance group so he could get in shape for next soccer season. He runs on his heels like a noob distance kid, but he is really fast.
At another meet, we tried him in an 800, as an experiment. It didn't go too well, he ended up in 2:22 ish. He's run an open 400 in 57 ish and a couple of relay splits in 55.
We've had him doing sprint mechanics work with the sprint group to try and get a more efficient, powerful stride on him, but he's been still going off and doing the bulk of his workouts with the MD group.
Yesterday was our first day of spring break. Our distance and MD kids worked out with the distance coach in the morning and I had the sprint group in the afternoon. The kid in went to the distance workout in the morning and did 2 x 600 @ 1:55 avg then 4 x 300 @ 49-51. Then he showed up in the afternoon for the sprinter workout as well. I didn't really want him to run, because he had already gone in the morning, but he assured me he felt good.
The sprint group workout was surprisingly similar to the MD workout for the day (2 x 500 @ 80% 400 speed + 2 x 300 @ 90% 400 speed). I told the kid to just run relaxed with the back end of the group (kids that run around 59-60 for the 400). Here were his times for the workout.
500 @ 91 ran with the group. 3 min rest
500 @ 83 decided group was too slow for him about 100m into rep. 6 min rest
300 @ 47 - 6 min rest
300 @ 46
All reps were on a section of our cross country course (we are in the process of having a new track built, so we are homeless for the season) and he was in trainers for both workouts.
The kid never looked pressed and he was never even really winded at the end of any reps. I'm thinking this guy should just be able to go out and pop a 52-53 for the open 400 and also easily go sub 2:10 in the 800, eventually going low 2:00 range for the season. We don't have an open 100 time for him yet, but he's been killing the 4 x 1 each time he gets the stick.
What am I missing here?