Nic Bideau says Stewart McSweyn didn't run a single lap under 60 seconds before he ran 3:50 in the mile

Uh, how many TME workout sessions have you attended?

holterskolter2 wrote:

It seemed more like he was saying that McSweyn doesn't respond well to lots of fast reps in training. I didnt read it as saying everybody should remove speed work from their training.

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This is what I liked most about the interview. So many coaches have a system and they force you to do it. Thinking if you do it you should run similarly well off that. My brother's college coach used to say to him "this is theworkouts our All-Americans did.. you can do them, why aren't you racing faster?"

This is a different athlete. Not everyone trains exactly the same. Some athletes might be able to force the workout but then they are spent for the race.

rojo wrote:

holterskolter2 wrote:

It seemed more like he was saying that McSweyn doesn't respond well to lots of fast reps in training. I didnt read it as saying everybody should remove speed work from their training.

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This is what I liked most about the interview. So many coaches have a system and they force you to do it. Thinking if you do it you should run similarly well off that. My brother's college coach used to say to him "this is theworkouts our All-Americans did.. you can do them, why aren't you racing faster?"

This is a different athlete. Not everyone trains exactly the same. Some athletes might be able to force the workout but then they are spent for the race.

Isn't that the guy who recently died and wejo claimed was awesome?

CoachB wrote:

A number of years ago, I was talking to Dave Smith about one of my athletes and the topic of German Fernandez's 3:55i WJR came up. He said the fastest German had gone in training was 10x400 @ 62-63

Well, he could probably have done that workout with no rest between intervals, sooooo... yeah, gonna call BS on that story.

dogg wrote:

The thing I’m concerned about is how he says speed work (faster than 1500 pace) is overrated, but then goes on to say that McSweyn has trouble keeping up in the final laps in races.

Interesting

Sounds like he needs to get stronger.

boulderist wrote:

Uh, how many TME workout sessions have you attended?

You hang out in the bushes on the north side of the Centennial middle school track; how dare any uninitiated non-local weigh in.

free shipping with purchase wrote:

dogg wrote:

The thing I’m concerned about is how he says speed work (faster than 1500 pace) is overrated, but then goes on to say that McSweyn has trouble keeping up in the final laps in races.

Interesting

Sounds like he needs to get stronger.

That's not what he meant. He meant that McSweyn would do bad in slow, tactical races (say a 3:35-4:00 1500m championship race) because other people like Lewandowski or Makloufhi would outkick him with their superior speed (1:43/1:42 800m).

But these 1500m races are the exception rather than the rule. In El Guerrouj times, it was just hammering and the fastest runner won. Now, it's still just hammering and Cheruiyot always wins. Why would the fittest/fastest 1500m runners risk a slow race and let someone like Noah Ngeny or Centro or Lewandowski win again? That would be a complete fail of the racing tactics of the fastest 1500m runners.

McSweyn belongs to that group, he wants a very fast average pace, a very fast, even-paced race. He doesn't want to run 70s laps in the first 3 and then finish with 50s (happens sometimes, for example this race was a ~4:00 1500m, starting super slow but then the last lap was mega fast, Lewandowski went from 6th to 2nd, almost winning even tho his PR at that point was 5s+ slower than almost anyone else in that field:

If this guy is doing 200 or 300 repeats, or maybe 600 or 800 repeats, or ladder workouts, this claim is somewhat disingenuous. Yes, he didn't do any 400 repeats under 60 in training. But he might have been doing other interval distances that indicate 3:50 mile capability.

LateRunnerPhil wrote:

adsfdasfasfsafadfa wrote:

When he is doing 12 sprints up a hill, I am bet he is at sub 60s effort levels.

The 12-second hill sprints have NOTHING in common with running very hard 400s.

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Sure but who said they were? The point is simply he was running faster than 60s pace (effort wise. who knows how steep that hill was) in training. I bet he even did some strides where he hit race pace for 10s.

Not sure why you are referencing Noah ngeny as if he hasn’t run 3:43.4 right behind El G - it’s not like he was a Lewandowski type where he couldn’t keep with a crazy hot pace up front

epicTCK wrote:

Not sure why you are referencing Noah ngeny as if he hasn’t run 3:43.4 right behind El G - it’s not like he was a Lewandowski type where he couldn’t keep with a crazy hot pace up front

Ngeny was definitely more FT than El Guerrouj. He had the stronger kick on the last 100m. Both were fit (and potentially on drugs/EPO), but Ngeny definitely had more speed and El Guerrouj more duration.

1:44 vs 1:47

2:11 vs 2:16

3:28 vs 3:26

4:50 vs 4:44

7:35 vs 7:23

See the pattern? I can create an Excel sheet based of the PR comparisons. Yes, the 800 and 1000 times of El G are from early of his career and probably not his lifetime potential, but since Bideau was referring them as well I might just also do so. Olympics 2000 final, El G big favorite:

1st place, gold medalist(s) 11 Noah Ngeny Kenya 3:32.07 OR

2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1 Hicham El Guerrouj Morocco 3:32.32

3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 7 Bernard Lagat Kenya 3:32.44

Why? Race was slow, and Ngeny destroyed him on the last 100m. From 1996-2003, in like 50+ races, this was the only time El Guerrouj lost to someone in a 1500m.

Think about Cheruiyot - hard to imagine someone beating him in the next 3-5 years in a 1500m race, he could be developing a similar racing record as El Guerrouj once did. If Jakob and McSweyn, who are both a lot slower/more slow-twitch and Lewandowski, who is getting old and struggles in races that are very fast from the get-go are his main competitors, I don't see him get challenged in 1500m races anytime soon.

So everything you just said proved that he can’t hang on when the kicking comes.

It’s not like races are an either or thing.

It’s not a slow race with a big kick OR a fast race with no kick.

It can’t be a mix.

I’ll I’m saying is that there to have a big kick you have to work on speed endurance and lactate tolerance, the article makes it seem like McSweyn doesn’t do much of this kind of work and also has his coach saying he can’t keep up with the kickers

Jim Ryun and Eamonn Coughlan did some high volume 400m workouts at paces slower than 60 sec, but also got after it when it mattered.

You are relying on offhand comments from a coach that seems to have his nose pressed against the baker's window, even though he is the coach of the athlete in question.

This coach is mistaking brains for a bull market, in that exceptional athletes can overcome coaches who are good but not the best. I put Peter Snell in this category with Lydiard his coach, and even more so because HRE confirmed that Lydiard wanted more credit for Snell's performances.

Geez. At least my HS coach never did that with me--he did refer to me as the next Peter Snell, but not because he wanted credit for what I could do.

dogg wrote:

So everything you just said proved that he can’t hang on when the kicking comes.

It’s not like races are an either or thing.

It’s not a slow race with a big kick OR a fast race with no kick.

It can’t be a mix.

I’ll I’m saying is that there to have a big kick you have to work on speed endurance and lactate tolerance, the article makes it seem like McSweyn doesn’t do much of this kind of work and also has his coach saying he can’t keep up with the kickers

The point is, that if McSweyn runs 3:28-3:30/3:31 consistently, the kickers will not have a kick. They will either have

- dropped off because the pace was too fast for them to begin with/hang on

- have no kick left in them, because they need to spend every ounce of their anaerobic energy just to hold the strong pace that McSweyn/Jakob are setting and got nothing left at the end and can't finish with their superior speed because they are just toast from the strong pace that McSweyn and similar runners put on them.

Bideau mentions how the 800m time is often overrated. Jakob ran a 1:46 this year in a perfectly paced race by his brother Filip and himself and his coach were perfectly happy with that. And Jakob IS one of the strongest 1500m runners, despite not having more speed/800m time!

clac wrote:

Jim Ryun and Eamonn Coughlan did some high volume 400m workouts at paces slower than 60 sec, but also got after it when it mattered.

You are relying on offhand comments from a coach that seems to have his nose pressed against the baker's window, even though he is the coach of the athlete in question.

This coach is mistaking brains for a bull market, in that exceptional athletes can overcome coaches who are good but not the best. I put Peter Snell in this category with Lydiard his coach, and even more so because HRE confirmed that Lydiard wanted more credit for Snell's performances.

Geez. At least my HS coach never did that with me--he did refer to me as the next Peter Snell, but not because he wanted credit for what I could do.

So who, at the time, would have been a better coach than Lydiard for Snell?

Also referring to Bideau as "this coach" implies you don't know who he is, which I think implies you don't know much about distance running. Mottram, Benita Willis, Sonia O'Sullivan are a few of his World medallists, not to mention all his other world class athletes over the years. Maybe Bideau isn't "the best" but I think he probably knows more than you....

That's not true. Olympic final in Sydney wasn't slow. 54,12 first 400m, 1:54 800m with el Guerroj and Ngeny following the rabbit. Check your facts before you post.

You’re either outkicking or outkicked yourself. McSweyn and Kajob do not have superior speed in the field. If they’re toast from leading the race there are two options to win.

1. Don’t lead

2. Get a better kick

It’s that simple. You don’t win anything on the track without a kick

Polraider wrote:

That's not true. Olympic final in Sydney wasn't slow. 54,12 first 400m, 1:54 800m with el Guerroj and Ngeny following the rabbit. Check your facts before you post.

The "rabbit" was El G's team colleague supposed to go out at a nice even pace and set him up for a win. A 54-60 was not ideal for El Guerrouj. What he needed was a 56-56 start to win the race. A fast beginning favors the more FT runner, and a slow middle part is also very favorable for them.

El Guerrouj won like 77 out of his 80 races. You simply don't beat a guy like that in an important race unless there is something that goes against his way. In this case, Youssef Baba, the Moroccan team mate that was supposed to lead him to an easy gold failed his job with his 54-60 pacing. Had he done 56-56-28 or something like that there was no way El Guerrouj would have lost. The pacer screwed up the first lap, ran the 2nd lap as bad as he could have ran and then disappeared. He was a shame for Morocco, he literally gets the best runner of the century as his teammate and just had to set him up for a win but managed to screw it up anyway.

To be fair, Wottle has said he was out for a week/weeks before the games with a busted up knee. Maybe he just wasn't aerobically in 1500 shape.