Socal Cush: "so in honor of ghost, i thought i’d get igy with it today. typically sunday is a dedicated long run for me, but i did 10.5 saturday with my h.s. team, so instead of o.d.-ing on lsd, i got on the track and did a classic igloi/douglas santa monica track club workout:
7 laps warmup, 10x100 (2 easy/1 good);
4x150 with 50m jog (1 medium/1 good);
6x200 goodspeed with 100m jog recovery;
6x250 goodswing with 150m jog recovery;
6x200 goodspeed with 100m jog recovery;
4x150 with 50m jog (1 medium/1 good);
10x100 easy.
400m jog in between sets, and constant motion/active recovery the whole workout—from the first 150 to the last 150, you do NOT stop. add up the mileage if you want; although i can guess, i prefer not to calculate myself. when i did a similar (and lengthier) workout like this with joe douglas, nothing was timed, and it was all by feel; however, the further removed i am from peak fitness, the more i need benchmarks, and lately i’ve been feeling weak of mind, body, and spirit, so i time the 200s cumulatively and discipline myself not to look at the time until the workout is done (this way i won’t try to set unrealistic expectations or force the workout). the first set of 200s added up to 3:31, the second set of 200s added up to 3:35, both 10+ seconds faster mile-pace-wise than what i did a month ago when i was only able to do sets of 4, without the final set of 150s.
in case anyone is wondering, i have no idea what this workout indicates, other than i know it helps advance fitness more quickly than any other single workout that i can think of. it’s not a workout that you can do on a weekly basis either; it’ll really beat you up. but with the flint mile looming, i hope it’ll pay dividends"
Thanks Cush for reminding me of good times at the Santa Monica College track. I was fortunate enough to run with Coach Mihaly Igloi 1967-1970 and Coach Joe Douglas 1972-1975.
This morning I did my own version of Igloi/Douglas interval training. I used it quite a bit in early season track base building as a coach. And I have found it useful lately. Why, I think because the focus is on form and effort, and not on the watch. The speeds both coaches used was fresh, good, and hard (tempo, interval or repetition Daniels' equivalents). The tempos (stride cadence) were speed and swing, as in "good speed" or "good swing." "Speed" emphasized short quick strides, "swing" saw lower knee drive and longer slower stride. So, in a training session the athlete not only experienced varying speeds but cadences.
Of the two coaches Igloi was more focused on form, which also included arm carriage and body angle at drive phase. Joe Douglas on the other hand made use of more typical tempo training which was not an element in Igloi's system. One Douglas SMTC workout I recall, that was on the long side, but typical in structure in my marathon training was: 2 mile warm-up with strides;
30:00 fresh on the roads (estimated 5:15-6:00 per mile); 4 x (10 x 440 yards alternating sets of good speed and good swing) / 220 yards between 440s and 440 between sets (estimated pace on the on the 440s was about 70-75); 20:00 fresh on the roads (5:15-6:00 per mile); mile cool-down including strides. This particular training session started at about 5:30 PM and finished around 8:00 pm. I cannot recall the exact morning sessions but it was typically another 6-7 miles of intervals, sandwiched between a shorter warm-up and cool-down of about a mile. The track intervals were run on the grass inside of the track so shorter than the actual distance. I would imagine that day I ran close to 30 miles morning and afternoon.
At the time both Joe and I worked full-time. Joe as a math teacher at Westchester High School and I as a contract analyst at Northrop Aircraft. Mihaly Igloi was a teacher at Loyola High School before he left to be National Track Coach of Greece in August of 1970. These coaches were at the track consistently 5:30 AM Monday-Friday, 5:30 PM Monday-Friday, Saturday 7:00 am and 4:30 PM, and Sunday 9:00 AM. We were off Easter, Christmas and two weeks at the end of August. Typically we had a time trial New Year's Day of 1320 yard followed by a flat out 440 yards. Nice huh!
I leave for others to discern the physiological benefits or merits of such training. Seems to work.
Igy