That guy was Pat Clohessy, NCAA DI champion at 3 miles in 1960-1961 who went on to become the coach of de Castella.
That guy was Pat Clohessy, NCAA DI champion at 3 miles in 1960-1961 who went on to become the coach of de Castella.
Great article. Thanks for sharing.
The training that worked for Mills was not a Lydiard approach at all.
The inconsistency Mills was having was more likely due to overreaching as he went looking for what actually worked for him, inexperience in racing longer distances and of course the blood sugar issues.
For endurance athletes w good speed-side capability, adjusting to longer racing and training is a challenge, specifically because they are not the average slogger.
60-80miles/week
good quality
many more solid 10 mile runs (down near 50') than slow 20 mile runs.
Look at the program Mills ran and you'll see much more in common with Moorcroft Lagat/Lalang w more strong Igloi influence (quality/volume) than anything.
Good post dsrunner. My memory is that as of 8/12/64 Billy Mills had qualified for the US Olympic trials by winning the US Servicemens' championship but he did not have the Olympic Time standard.
Coach Mihaly Igloi runner, Ron Larrieu, had not qualified for the trials nor did he have the Olympic Standard so Coach Igloi set up a special 6 mile race at the Pierce Collage of Woodland Hills weekly all-comers meet of August 8.
1-Ron Larrieu 27:54
2-Billy Mills 27:56.2 both breaking the US 6 mile record of Buddy Edelen (28:008) and better than the Olympic Standard.
The order of finish in the US 10K Trials was Lindgren, Mills and Larrieu.
By the way, the ever improving Mills Olympic time improvement was only about 46 seconds.
Also, Mills had already made the Olympic team in the Marathon before that Olympic 10,000 trials race.
I was discussing the Clohessey/Mills thing with Ron Clarke a few months ago. When Clohessey went back to Oz from Houston in the early 60s he trained with Clarke's group at the Caulfield Race Course. The group did nothing but good paced, steady running. Tony Cook and Trevor Vincent had discussed what they were doing with Lydiard in 1961 when they were racing there and Trevor told me that their discussions with Lydiard convinced them that "we were on the right track." But they were not using a "pure" Lydiard system.
The other big influence on Clohessey was probably the summer of 1962 when he was racing in Europe and travelling with Lydiard and his guys. The Australian version of the story is that Clohessey's advice to Mills was instrumental to him winning the 10,000 in Tokyo but I've never seen an account of specifically what Clohessey advised Mills to change or if Mills took the advice.
Lydiard told me that in Tokyo Mills told him, "I tried to do your training but couldn't do 100 mile weeks so I only did 80." Lydiard went on, "That's because he was running too fast. And he told me that he got sick when he did intervals so he didn't do them. That's why he won, because he didn't do intervals." If you put that statement together with Clarke's claim that Clohessey got Mills to train along the lines of his, Clarke's, group it sort of adds up. Eighty mile weeks at a good clip but without intervals was about what the Caulfield guys were doing though some added a morning run. In "The Unforgiving Minute" Clarke writes that Cook and Vincent ran as much as 80 miles a week.
Of course if you look at samples of Mills' training he did quite a lot of intervals but Lydiard was talking about the lead up to Tokyo.
RIP: D3 All-American Frank Csorba - who ran 13:56 in March - dead
RENATO can you talk about the preparation of Emile Cairess 2:06
Great interview with Steve Cram - says Jakob has no chance of WRs this year
Running for Bowerman Track Club used to be cool now its embarrassing
Hats off to my dad. He just ran a 1:42 Half Marathon and turns 75 in 2 months!
2024 College Track & Field Open Coaching Positions Discussion