Funniest thing I've read in a while, thank you Amby.

Quite funny. Thanks for the link. I'm sure he's out to get some people riled up and talking about rw. It works, obviously...

Burfoot is total garbage!

my thougth exactly, he's just trying to sell his magazine. but we know, rw is the root of running evil and that amby is a buffoon.

niarun wrote:

Quite funny. Thanks for the link. I'm sure he's out to get some people riled up and talking about rw. It works, obviously...

Burfoot isn't that sharp, I see common usage errors in that piece.

Not very clever, either. I thought it was mostly insipid.

Amby is neither dumb nor espousing what some refer to as 'the RW way of thinking- do as much/more on less'. That said, I don't agree w/his 40 miles per week training suggestion. I said so on the RW board. It's simply not enough miles for him to be competitive w/the very best and maybe not even the best Americans.

I wouldn't make too much of Amby's idea...it's at one extreme and the best answer is unknown. He did not run 27:22 and 12:56 off 40 miles per week and it's VERY, VERY unlikely he could've. He knows his history of aches and so do his mentors. We could argue on & on about how much is enough and too much. Amby is right- we are experiments of one and so far, the higher mileage has yielded some sweet returns for Ritz. It has produced aches too. Play the edge, meld together what appears to work.

There's a place for 40 miles a week but it isn't as a staple of the program.

The link is blocked for me but if AB is suggesting that Ritz needs to run less, even if said in jest, his target audience is penguins......

That, obviously, is in jest. Ha Ha

I didn't think it was very funny, but maybe I was missing something

Goochiness wrote:

That, obviously, is in jest. Ha Ha

Apparently not.

AMBY COMMENTS: No, Sorry, I'm not being satirical, though I'm certainly trying to provoke people into thinking there might be many paths to world-class performance. Here's what I think about Ritz: He's possibly America's most talented distance runner, and, while he's laid down plenty of impressive races, something has kept him from running his best in Olympics, World Championships and other occasions like the London Marathon last April. He faces a choice now: He can continue doing what has brought him some major achievements in the past, or he can try something new that could prove even more successful. These are tough decisions. We're all an experiment of one, and we don't get to run the Olympics every week. I'm glad that he's working with Alberto now. He's had great coaches in the past. But I don't think there's anyone smarter than Alberto, or anyone who learned more than Alberto through his own experiences

Amby has a noted long history in the sport and was a great runner himself, but he's missing something here. Ritzenhein has had one great coach in the past, Wetmore. The reason he wasn't ready to perform in his biggest races as a pro previously really has nothing to do with mileage.

"But there's little to no evidence saying 100 is better than 40."

I wonder when Amby started to trust the "evidence" of results from crude lab experiments carried out by third-rate graduate students instead of the evidence of results from actual training programs carried out by the best distance runners over the past fifty years.

Avocados Number wrote:

"But there's little to no evidence saying 100 is better than 40."

I wonder when Amby started to trust the "evidence" of results from crude lab experiments carried out by third-rate graduate students instead of the evidence of results from actual training programs carried out by the best distance runners over the past fifty years.

...probably including himself.

coopington wrote:

...probably including himself.

Definitely including himself. Burfoot ran his best times off of 120+ miles per week.

We, as a nation, already tried this "more with less" approach in the 90's and it didn't work.

This leads me to believe that Amby is stuck in the throes of recycling old bad ideas into new bad ideas just to get some press or to appear fresh.

Authors like Burfoot are in the business of selling subscriptions based on telling people what they want to hear. Isn't that how all magazines work?

The blog appears on the website only. There are no "subscriptions."

He's just floating a new idea, engaging in a bit of hyperbole.

r.t.i. wrote:

Authors like Burfoot are in the business of selling subscriptions based on telling people what they want to hear. Isn't that how all magazines work?

Maybe....but who wants to hear that an elite runner should run 40 miles per week? Your description would explain why he would give low-mileage advice to recreational runners, but what does it have to do with Ritz or Salazar?

read this one, funny stuff in response to Amby

http://www.thecassidyfeed.com/yo-dathan-and-alberto-ive-got-a-new-training-plan-for-you-too