doesit?? wrote:
Does summer of malmo actually work? I want to hear some success stories that are from people who got good over the summer from this.
The idea for Summer of Malmo actually originated in 1989, the Summer that Terrance Mahon went from scrub to stud.
"Summer of Malmo" is "a foolproof, no-nonsense, 100 percent guaranteed program that will help runners of all abilities to improve their fitness over the summer WITHOUT the attendant physical or mental fatigue" just as it says in the first paragraph. It is in-between season training. It isn't a training "program" so-to-speak.
"Summer of Malmo" was born out of John Schiefer's Track&FieldMedia.com message board almost ten years ago. Tranck&FieldMedia was the "Granddaddy of the running message boards" and had Schiefer not decided to spend more time on his day job Letsrun would have never become the "world famous message board" it is today.
Track&FieldMedia.com was just like it is here today, full of runners looking for the secret workout or the secret program that will take them to the next step. Every year about this time they start devising all sort of ingenious plans for the Summer to get them ready for cross country season. Then, as it is now, they were looking for a blueprint for the Summer, when in reality there is no blueprint, there are no secret workouts at all. All there is, is consistency, persistence and patience -- just as it always was. Summer of Malmo is a concept, not a blueprint, feel free to adjust it to suit your needs.
Knowing that "consistency, persistence and patience" doesn't excite anyone, one day I posted on T%FMedia that I had the Summer program that was exactly what all of the young bucks were looking for, and that when I get a chance I'll post it. This became somewhat of a running joke at the T&FMedia message boards, each week someone would ask about my summer "training" program and each week I's say, I'm still "working on it.
Finally in June, I realized I couldn't procrastinate any longer, so I sat down and wrote "Summer of Malmo" with the Seinfeld episode of "Summer of George" in the background on TV. It was born part out of reality, the Summer of 1989 that Terrance Mahon decided he was going to get serious, and went from unknown scrub to College All-America, but it was also part reflection of mine as to how high school and college runners should go about training during the Summer between seasons.
Historically, runners tend to come from two camps; their motivation gets misplaced during the Summer and they do too little training to prepare themselves for XC, or they train too hard, come to school in great shape and don't improve, causing disillusionment and then misplace blame on their coach for ruining them.
I decided that if I could do it over again, or if I were a college coach, I'd direct my runners that the first thing they should do when they get home is to call all of their friends up and make a commitment to meet twice weekly for informal training sessions. I'd tell them to put the word out to all of the local high school teams and invite them to the training sessions as well. The point of those sessions would be that this is a social event and the workouts would be low-stress aerobic workouts. ALL WORKOUTS would be run at an intensity level that is well-within the ability of all runners.
The idea of having runners all run the same pace, periodically jumping in and out of the workout that the lead group is doing, also came out of that Summer of 1989. I had been knocked out of training by a dose of sciatica. When I started running, I decided that rather than building up my mileage with all easy runs, I'd start doing interval work on the track immediately, but I'd start off running slow and short, gradually lengthening the distance and increasing the speed as my body let me. The original "Summer of Terrance" group consisted of Terrance Mahon, Peter Fonseca, Brad Hudson, Colin Dalton and myself, with assorted guest stars jumping (not sure how many times Pat Haller made it) in depending on who was in town for that session. There were times that I'd jump in for a lap (while the group was running a 5 mile tempo run) then wait until they got back around, then I'd jump in again, and so on. Each week I'd run a little bit more and/or a little bit faster, finally by the end of the Summer I caught up to the lead. This was the easiest Summer of good training I ever had.
I.John Nutlall. Iowa St.. 29.30
2 Jonah Koech, Iowa Sr . 29.32
3 German Beltran,Alabama. 29:33
4. Terry Thornton. LSU ana Sr., 29.49
5. Robcrr Kennedy. Indiana. 29.54.
6. Todd Williams,. Tennessee. 29.47
7 Shannon Butler. Montana St, 29.59;
8. Brad Hudson. Oregon. 30:01.
9. Mark Croghan. OSU St 30.03
10. In Peter Sherry. Georgetown. 30.04
11 Darrell Smith. Iowa St, 30.07
12. James Gibson Yale. 3O.08
13 Joe Kirby. Nebraka. 30.09
14. Jesse McGuire WMU 30.09
15. Stan Dollman. WKU 30.13
16. Peter Fonseca Oregon 30.16
17 Pat Hailer. Oregon. 30.16
18. Sammy Cherulyot. Mt. St. Mary’ 30 17.34.
19. Steven Fury. Oklahwna St. 30:22
20. Steven Brown. Penn St 30.23
27. Terrance Mahon, Oregon 30.31