Training of Vincent Rousseau, former world champion half marathon and 2:07 marathoner

If I remember correctly he use to have a clause in his marathon contract that he would not have to compete if the temperature was too warm.

Fred Gwynne wrote:

If I remember correctly he use to have a clause in his marathon contract that he would not have to compete if the temperature was too warm.

Yes, it was a thick blood clause.

Thank you I greatly appreciate the info.

Thank you. Are you the same guy who posted about Karl Lismont and Puttemans a while back?

PS

What sort of times for shorter distances did Vandervennet have?

HRE wrote:

PS

What sort of times for shorter distances did Vandervennet have?

Hi HRE, yep, I'm the guy that posted about the training of Lismont and Puttemans, and I also posted about Nijboer and Hermens.

I'm not 100% sure these were his personal bests, but Vandervennet ran a 3000m in 8.04 and a 10000m in 29.31.

PS: I don't post much, but I do read a lot on LetsRun, especially old threads, when the main subject was mostly about training methods and schedules. And your posts are always great to read!

Thanks, What you do post is really good. There doesn't seem to be an interval session anywhere in sight with either of these guys.

Fred Gwynne wrote:

If I remember correctly he use to have a clause in his marathon contract that he would not have to compete if the temperature was too warm.

A 1996 article:

HRE wrote:

There doesn't seem to be an interval session anywhere in sight with either of these guys.

Rousseau actually did do quite some interval sessions when he was still

a track runner competing in the 5000/10000m.

It wasn't until he switched to the marathon that he

really started to focus on threshold training with an occasional fartlek.

In a certain way he's the complete opposite of Lismont, who

focussed completely on speed/interval sessions his entire career.

Another thing worth mentioning is that Rousseau never took

1-3 weeks off after a (track) season; which is something elite athletes seem to do more nowadays.

He kept in racing shape all year long, from January 1 to December 31.

If he felt particularly weak/tired, he would simply take a day off.

Rousseau was never really concerned with peaking, which probably cost him some medals on European and World championships.

I'm not sure Vandervennet didn't do many interval sessions, since the only information I've got about him is what I posted...

This is a nice article about Vandervennet; it's in flemish/dutch, but Google Translate might help you out...

https://kw.knack.be/west-vlaanderen/sport/wielrennen/de-trainer-van-de-nieuwe-merckx-is-zowaar-een-west-vlaming/article-longread-320911.html

Thanks for that. I like the comments about not being able to handle hot weather. That was always a plague for me.

Ir seems like there might have been a train of thought in Belgium that said long runs were not totally necessary? Your sample from Lismont showed that he rarely did them and there was a thread here a long time ago that mentioned Marc Smet and claimed that he never ran for more than an hour. No matter, great stuff!

I'd say it was just a coincidence; plenty of runners (like Gaston Roelants) did do long runs.

Lismont definitely did not do long runs and many fellow marathoners and coaches of the time thought he was crazy.

His rationale was that 2-3 runs of 10-15 km per day, were just as effective in building endurance without the strain and boredom of a long run.

(from personal experience, even though I've never run a marathon and am nowhere near as good as Lismont, I tend to agree: a 2 hour run leaves me feeling flat, whereas 2 one hour runs are invigorating)

About Marc Smet: I've seen several threads here that stated he only ran one hour a day, but I've got no information about his training to confirm or deny this.

All I know about him is based on an interview with his coach. He said he'd never known anyone to be able to train as hard or suffer as much in training as Smet.

HRE wrote:

Ir seems like there might have been a train of thought in Belgium that said long runs were not totally necessary? Your sample from Lismont showed that he rarely did them and there was a thread here a long time ago that mentioned Marc Smet and claimed that he never ran for more than an hour. No matter, great stuff!

Another bloke from Belgium here. Less knowledgeable about running history though.

Not in Belgium, but in Holland (where people also speak Dutch) they have « sportrusten » (« sport resting »).

It’s 100 day marathon schedule with 4 times running/week. The longest run is 14K (9 miles) and the hardest week features 2 14K (9 miles) runs at marathon pace.

There’s quite some philosophy behind it, which I will not explain in full detail.

One of the key components is finding your « marathon heart rate ».

I know people that have finished marathons using this schedule. A guy I know finished in 4:15 with even splits.

Why does it work? Just my humble opinion:

- every week one 5k run run hard, sort of a tempo run. Also a very easy run (« bird watching ») and a longer run at MP.

- you avoid overuse injuries esp in novice runners.

- the « marathon heart rate » is rather conservative, so people start slow. Avoiding a start that is too fast is a key element in a successfull marathon. The downside is that in my opinion people don’t reach their full potential by starting off too easily. The 4:15 guy I mentioned is a decent biker and should have been able to get well under 4 hours in his first marathon with classic marathon training.

I was always religious about doing long runs. But when I read that Lismont didn't do many of them because he got bored after and hour I was intrigued. I always got bored toward the end of a two hour run. I was great for 90 minutes and could hang on for another 10-15 minutes but that last bit seemed to go on forever.

I recall reading that Roelants, in getting ready for the '72 Olympic marathon, was doing a 40 km run pretty much everyday. I don't know how accurate that was. I really think it comes down to running enough miles or kilometers overall.

Apparently there's a book in Japan with a title like "If You Can Run for an Hour, You Can Run a Marathon." If it was ever translated I'd get a copy.

I don't know how many times he did that, but in a general training week that wouldn't have been that common.

Belgians at the time went on training camps in St. Moritz (Switzerland) in preparation for major competitions; when on such a training camp Roelants would often run 3 times a day and then he probably did run around 40 km a day, just not in one session. I cannot comment on the actual length of his long runs.

A fun anecdote: on one of those training camps Puttemans and Roelants were doing an easy run around a pond while their coach, Vanden Eynde, was watching. When Puttemans passed by him he said: "Roelants just said he's gonna try and catch you", when Roelants passed by 2 minutes later he said that Puttemans had told him the same thing. Roelants looked over across the pond and saw Puttemans had sped up, so he ramped up the pace as well. They kept going at it for an hour or so until one of them decided it was enough. Puttemans recalled that they ran like two 80 year old men the next day.

Lismont would agree ;)

Yup, definitely a fun story. Thanks again.

Well...

He was most likely actn3xx and therefor didnt have to give his muscle fibers adaption to more slow twitch.

East africans and most others doesnt have that.

Take me as an example. 5 months into my running training (3 runs a week for 45minutes) I ran a half in 1h8m. Since then I have tried every method but my second best time is 1h 14m. My second was on 70 miles of training a week.

Will try to modify my old aproach and see how i do.