Has anyone successfully translated Renato Canova's writing into something that makes sense?

Canova is a Gd wrote:

Has anyone successfully translated Renato Canova's writing into something that makes sense? I don't think it's Renato's fault at all, he's a genius, but I can't for the life of me understand what he's saying whenever he posts.

Ask him to post in Italian.

A lot worse:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkrREsDTfmo&feature=youtu.be&t=78

Canova is a Gd wrote:

Has anyone successfully translated Renato Canova's writing into something that makes sense? I don't think it's Renato's fault at all, he's a genius, but I can't for the life of me understand what he's saying whenever he posts.

Yes, a guy by the name of Stephen Cherono (Shaheen); and another named, Sondre Moen.

I shudder to think what you'd be like in any country whose first language was not English.

Magness and Hudson’s books are the best ones that take some of Canova’s principles and make them understandable

As you get closer to the Marathon run more Marathon SPECIFIC workouts

I have, what do you want to know?

Unless you’re smoove then run more v02max intervals to create magical adaptations.

His stuff translates into "East Africans don't use EPO, except when they do, and even then they're not among the fastest ones, except when they are, in which case EPO doesn't work with East Africans anyway because elastic blood vessels, except that it does."

One you accept that he's a fraud, and that his programs will work for exactly 0 percent of clean runners who do things other than eat, sleep and run, you can take what there is that Canova has swiped from others and go from there.

I agree. I printed out his work quite a long time ago and for the second or third time tried to get through it. I ended up finally tossing it in the trash. Canova should write it all down in Italian and have someone translate it into English.

Coached Fitness Blogger wrote:

His stuff translates into "East Africans don't use EPO, except when they do, and even then they're not among the fastest ones, except when they are, in which case EPO doesn't work with East Africans anyway because elastic blood vessels, except that it does."

One you accept that he's a fraud, and that his programs will work for exactly 0 percent of clean runners who do things other than eat, sleep and run, you can take what there is that Canova has swiped from others and go from there.

You forgot that East Africans are genetically distinct humans such that EPO does not work on them. Yet, there exists no other biomedical distinctions.

My favorite summary: athletes popped for EPO have weak minds.

Weak minds!!!

You're welcome.

Be wary of replicating his schedules. They are designed for elite athletes training at an elite level and can spend all their time recovering (the workouts are more taxing year-round than other typical schedules). He is notorious for driving some athletes into the dirt while others become world champions, it really just depends. I did not know this, and as a senior in high school I tried to canova my training. I ended up running myself into the ground and was plagued with sickness and injuries all winter. I was better off when I was just doing 40-50mpw easy during base phase and transitioning into speedwork; plain Jane, but it was effective.

Canova is not a god. His training is not the only thing that works. Unless you're late in college or post-collegiate and have trained at a high level for ~6 or more years, you don't need anything fancy to improve. Just the basics. If you are at a high level and feel you need to shake up your training, only then should you try to replicate a canova schedule.

I see that there are three major components that you would need to have to even begin consider replicating a Canova scehdule.

1) Canova also made it pretty clear in his write up of Moen's training that a big part of his philosophy and Moen's success is spending a significant time at altitude (>75%).

2) His athletes also run 13 times a week with mileage around 140MPW. You're experiences with "Canova" as a person who ran his best at 45mpw during base is just not relevant.

3) The above poster was right, he suggests his training his for athletes who already have trained for years and years and a have a huge base.

Without those three components (altitude, concurrent mileage, lifetime mileage) you won't be replicating his schedule or training system. Trying to replicate a few weeks or months would be stupid then.

That being said there are aspects of his training that you could introduce into your own training system. You won't be doing "canova" but you can learn from his training. I personally like his hills during base phase. This seems obvious, but I know few people who do this routinely. The circuits he outlined in a recent youtube video are intriguing and could be another good addition to base phase.

You could add more doubles and do fewer medium long runs. To get to high mileage, his marathoner's are completing two 50-60' runs per day as opposed to one run per day of 70-80 minutes. I make my runs longer to bump up my mileage, but if my schedule allowed it I would like to try adding mileage by adding more 50-60' runs into my week.

The schedules of his athletes also don't strictly follow the calendar week. I.e. They aren't consistently running hard efforts on Wednesdays, long runs on Sundays. We could all take not of that and try to be more flexible with the timing of our hard efforts. Side note, he also treats long runs as hard efforts. I haven't seen too many easy paced long runs in his schedules. Instead there are hard continuous 30km runs (at altitude).

He's big on periodization with the periods lasting 4-6 weeks (i got this from the google doc posted above). As you progress towards the key race/races, the hard efforts become more and more specific. That seems like a fairly basic concept although if you traverse these boards and threads like sub1:10 and sub 2:30 in boston, you'll notice that many people do not structure their training phases in this way.

He advocates "extension" or always progressing your training. This would be doing a 4m tempo, then 5, then 6 and so on. After reaching 6 or 8 miles, you could revisit the 4m tempo but now at a faster pace and repeat the cycle. Again a lot of instead have our weekly 5M tempo that we incorporate as part of our routine, but often neglect to progress or extend that tempo effort over time.

Two more components I've noticed then I'll end this wall of text: 1) his workouts tend to have a lot of volume. Moen's final workouts before his HM ranged from 14,000m-21,000m. 2) he'll mix faster than race pace and slower than race pace repeats into the same workout even alternating during. Moen completed a workout of 6k, 5x400, 6k, 5x200 one week prior to his recent half marathon. People I know typically like to either separate the speeds into different workouts (tempo tuesday, 200s at mile pace thursday) or lightly cap off bigger workouts with 4x200. The Canova Ndiku workouts had more extreme versions of this like a workout that incorporated 5x200 after each longer interval during a waterfall type workout (2k, 1600, 1200, 800).