Question for Hodgie-San.

Sounds like how a lot of elites use to train, look up Mark Nenow who would almost never do a workout on a track.

That's interesting. I always thought the argument was whether it should be 2 or 3 workouts per week, not just 1.....

I'll look up Nenow, thank you. It'd still be interesting to know if there was any adhoc quicker running in the general runs. Particularly the Squires style surges as per the SWEP book in the long runs.

Zoopy-zoopy wrote:

That's interesting. I always thought the argument was whether it should be 2 or 3 workouts per week, not just 1.....

I'll look up Nenow, thank you. It'd still be interesting to know if there was any adhoc quicker running in the general runs. Particularly the Squires style surges as per the SWEP book in the long runs.

Squires is inscrutable.

That's as may be Sir Reggie but the book was quite clear.

I don't know why Squires doesn't have the adoration of Lydiard or Daniels. His athletes were dominate in the 70s and 80s, it's certainly not gimmicky or odd training. Is it because he's such an odd person?

TNrunnah wrote:

I don't know why Squires doesn't have the adoration of Lydiard or Daniels. His athletes were dominate in the 70s and 80s, it's certainly not gimmicky or odd training. Is it because he's such an odd person?

That's a good question but he's not THAT odd. I'd say that one reason is that unlike Lydiard he never coached anyone to an Olympic medal or world record. That's also true of Daniels and that leads to thinking that he hasn't written a book or books that have had the circulation and sales that Daniels's and Lydiard's have.

TNrunnah wrote:

I don't know why Squires doesn't have the adoration of Lydiard or Daniels. His athletes were dominate in the 70s and 80s, it's certainly not gimmicky or odd training. Is it because he's such an odd person?

I like the look of the training as per the book, and certainly wouldn't class it as gimmicky or odd, though it is different to Lydiard or Daniels. I'm just trying to wrap my head around the difference between what's in the book and what Hodgie-san done, hence my wondering if there were quicker finishes to some of his runs, or if he just didn't mention surges in the long runs, etc.

It certainly seems like it would suit me more than Lydiard or Daniels. I've done Lydiard style in the past and the base work just wore me down (I don't seem to do as well with masses of (close to) marathon pace running).

Blitzkrieg BLITZKRIEG wrote:

Sounds like how a lot of elites use to train, look up Mark Nenow who would almost never do a workout on a track.

Here is a good thread on Nenow.

That was a short but interesting thread. The trend seems to be easy/solid mileage, but lots of it, with either regular races or a workout per week, plus possibly regular strideouts.

I still have the feeling that just one race or one workout per week seems light. Was it just that these guys were so talented that they didn't need more, or was it more that the consistent big mileage was the key?

Are there any more examples of runners who trained like this?

Zoopy-zoopy wrote:

That was a short but interesting thread. The trend seems to be easy/solid mileage, but lots of it, with either regular races or a workout per week, plus possibly regular strideouts.

I still have the feeling that just one race or one workout per week seems light. Was it just that these guys were so talented that they didn't need more, or was it more that the consistent big mileage was the key?

Are there any more examples of runners who trained like this?

There's a third explanation that was mentioned and not ruled out: there were informal, unstructured moderate/harder efforts mixed into some of the regular runs. Does he list his paces in his log or just the mileage each day? If you're running 1 workout or race per week, its pretty common, at least for me, to have some of those plain mileage days naturally be quicker/harder efforts.

Zoopy-zoopy wrote:

That was a short but interesting thread. The trend seems to be easy/solid mileage, but lots of it, with either regular races or a workout per week, plus possibly regular strideouts.

I still have the feeling that just one race or one workout per week seems light. Was it just that these guys were so talented that they didn't need more, or was it more that the consistent big mileage was the key?

Are there any more examples of runners who trained like this?

I was in that thread but don't recall anyone but Clarke, Nenow, and Musyoki, being mentioned. There have been others. Bill Adcocks trained similarly as did Clayton, the British Dick Taylor, Bernie Allen, 9th at Boston in 1974, maybe Mark Curp, as well as guys in Ron Clarke's group of whom I think Trevor Vincent and Tony Cook were the best known. I think all of these guys were self coached. It's not a method that coaches seem to like maybe because doing it doesn't require much coaching.