Sprinter Vs. Distance Runner

As of 2008, track and field boasted about a million participants at the high-school level. While motivations for joining teams vary, many young people are interested simply in finding out how fast they can run. Whether "fast" means all-out running for the duration of an event -- a sprint -- or running longer events in which pacing is essential -- a distance run -- depends on both the athlete's physical gifts and her mental makeup.

Definitions

A sprint generally is defined as any event up to 400 m long, with the most common international distances, in meters, being the 60, 100, 200 and 400. The 800, 1,500, and 3,000 are regarded as middle-distance track events, while the 5,000 and 10,000 are the long-distance track events; together, these are considered distance races. On roads, common long-distance races include the 5k, 10k, 13.1-mile half-marathon and 26.2-mile marathon.

Physiology

Whether you are physically better suited for sprints than distance races is determined by your ratio of slow-twitch, or type I, muscle fibers to type II, or fast-twitch, muscle fibers. The former utilize oxygen in a pay-as-you-go manner, while the latter burn large amounts of glucose and are involved in "anaerobic" events. The upshot is that if you have a preponderance of slow-twitch fibers, you're better suited for long distance no matter how you train, and if you're an aspiring marathoner with a high percentage of fast-twitch fibers, you might want to play to your strengths and stick with sprinting. A muscle biopsy is the only sure way to know your ratio.

Training

Sprinters and distance runners have different competitive requirements and accordingly their respective training schedules are quite different. Sprinters require less general endurance than distance runners, and focus on practicing their starts and running form, and do more fast repeats up steep hills and far more weight work. Distance runners focus on sustained runs of 30 to 60 minutes or longer and rely on longer repeats of 200 to 800 m or more at the pace of their preferred race distance.

Availability

One important way in which sprinters differ from distance runners is that beyond the high-school and college level, there are far fewer opportunities to enter sprints because there are not nearly as many track meets open to everyday adults as there are road races of 5k or longer, which routinely feature many thousands of entrants. So even if you were a sprinter in high school, if you want to compete and stay fit as an adult, your major recourse will be running road races.