Sisters Sasha and Tara have found a good deal of success in running.

Sasha runs mostly shorter distances, never exceeding 400m. Her best race in high school was a 14.13 100mh

Tara will drop down from the 800m distance to the 400m, especially when it is a chance to race her older sister! Tara’s 2.11 800m run as a high school sophomore last season showed tremendous potential for the next 2 years before moving on to college.

Last year, the two sisters were pitted against each other in an open 400m race. Both are tough competitors, so the match up looked like it was going to be an all-out, do or die battle between them.

In Sasha’s case, the lack of running more than a 70m repeat distance (averaging 55m per repeat) during any practice session made the likely outcome a smashing success for her younger sister. Lactic acid alone should have destroyed all hope for Sasha’s goal of a victorious result.

The gun fired and the race was on!

Before moving on to the finish, here are some interesting facts:

At the time of the match, Sasha’s 10m and 300m ASRspeed trial times were 1.09 and 40.5 seconds, respectively.

Tara ran 1.20 and 41.5 seconds.

A look at the ASRspeed algorithm showed the following:

Sasha: Speed aerobic (aer) = 4.44m/s, Speed anaerobic (spd an) = 9.24m/s, Anaerobic reserve (asr) = 4.26m/s 

Tara: (aer) = 5.43m/s, (spd an) = 8.38m/s, Anaerobic reserve (asr) = 2.75m/s 

Certainly Tara was much slower on the anaerobic and the anaerobic speed reserve side, but that nearly 1m/s faster aerobic capacity was going to bury sister Sasha as the meters clicked by on the way to the 400 finish line.

Or was it?

Before telling who actually won, there is an additional factor to consider.

Sasha’s 10m time of 1.09 verses Tara’s 1.20.

To those not familiar with the impact of that 0.11 second difference in the short run—it is enormous. Sasha’s peak speed for the 10m run is 9.17m/s. Tara’s is a significantly slower 8.3m/s.

Sasha’s 0-300 meter time averaged 7.41m/s; Tara’s was 7.23m/s. The gap between them closed considerably over 300m distance. At 800m, Tara averaged 6.67m/s while Sasha would drop to 6.15m/s.

So what would happen at 400m, the race we had been waiting for?

The ASR algorithm suggests that Sasha could run a 58.3 and Tara would be waiting for her with 57.8. Or, within the 3% margin of error, it could be the other way around…

As for result of the run, a video of the finish line had to be replayed in slow motion several times to detect the winner!

And the winner was….

Sasha won it in 58.03 to Tara's 58.07. Margin of victory, .04 seconds