Seb Coe - ''120 miles a week and tons of steel in the gym''

I remember that very well (and Martin, as I recall, had previously been among those who believed that Coe was a very low-mileage guy). But I remember that Seb Coe completely contradicted that in a conversation with Bowerman and Kenny Moore, and Peter repeatedly contradicted himself a number of times. I know that people will point out that they could have been talking about different periods of a competitive cycle, but I've read their various statements enough to believe that they were both flat-out liars (perhaps I should say "prevaricators" or something else a bit more euphemistic, but I think that would be less accurate) about these matters. (Coincidentally, I've been thinking and re-reading about Roger Bannister recently, and he also appeared to lie a lot about such stuff (and many other things). There are some interesting cultural aspects to all of this, but I don't want to get into that right now.)

Many years ago, I noticed that one difference between elite and mid-pack runners was that the elite were more likely to understate their training, and the mid-packers were more likely to overstate theirs. But I do want to make clear that I'm talking generally in that regard.

That's the one.

He most likely wasn't being literal about the miles. Did he really lift "tons" of steel? What if he would have said, "millions of miles a week and tons of steel" would we ask if he really ran millions of miles a week. He was just saying his motivation was racing and not a "lot" of training. I think he was emphasizing with those who do approach 120-miles/week and that is it. Would be good to ask him exactly what he did though.

Tons of steel in the gym LOL.

Coe was a puny little girl.

Have you guys read Peter Coe and David Martins book? That will confirm the High Mileage talk is CRAP.

Gosh, why do people here care so much about mileage?

Think of it like heights in professional basketball. All other things being equal, the 6'9" basketball player will, on average, be more effective at scoring points than the 6'4" player. But both the 6'9" and 6'4" player are extremely tall compared to the average basketball player at the rec level, high school level, etc. Within a basketball league, the correlation between height and points will be very weak.

70mpw versus 120mpw is like high v. super-high mileage. The correlation with success among the pros is going to be very weak. Mileage is a very rough proxy for dedication and small differences in aerobic fitness (which wouldn't make any difference for a race like the 800m).

Also, competitive runners often cycle through high and low mileage, averaging out to medium mileage. They'll quote their highest week just to get the point across that they're training hard or whatever.

He ran 49.3 on the first lap of his wr in 1981.

There is a clear undercurrent/message: "Give up! I am faster because I am far more talented than you. There is no amount of work you could put in to keep up with me."

In reality, it was a lot of hard work and discipline with focus on both quality and quantity.

Unfortunately, a lot of coaches today expect to get results out of 30 mpw. They get improvement only from the beginner ranks, those who ran 0 mpw before joining the team. All others suffer.

If you actually just looked 2 posts above your own, you would see why there's confusion around this.

It was a pretty common thing for athletes in the 70s and 80s to only count their "quality" miles in their weekly mileage. I've watched documentaries where even Lydiard athletes like John Walker and Dick Quax talk about not counting their evening jogs as part of their weekly mileage - so they were doing 100 miles of what they considered quality, and then additional mileage at a lower intensity, that they didn't record.

Coe obviously did the same thing, and because the mentality of what is and isn't training has changed, he's now reporting his true mileage.

(However, 120 may have been his absolute peak).

In early 1991 I was visiting Lydiard in Auckland. He told me both Coes had been there on a visit a few weeks earlier and shown him the diaries. "He ran a lot more than most people know," Arthur told me. "It wasn't all that different than what I had Snell doing." He said there were "a lot" of weeks in the 90s and nothing much below 70 and that there was the odd 100 in the mix and the totals went down noticeably in racing season.. He made no mention of seeing 120 mile weeks. You could speculate or guess. Maybe there's a diary Arthur didn't see.

Not sure why anyone who has followed Coe from the 70's to now would believe a word he says. Born politician.

I have not read their book but I did talk about this once with David Martin who said the higher mileage stuff (I'm not going to call what Coe did high mileage) was definitely NOT crap and that Coe did a lot more mileage than people knew. Peter Coe said a very similar thing in a letter he sent to Track and Field News in the late 90s, I think that was when.

It depended on the periods, he used a simple-annual periodization, with different peaks of means, a first block was very plausible that it reached more than 100 miles because it comprised, many slow runs, races and at a medium pace, medium-fast pace and then the peak of the aerobic threshold.

At this block there followed a second where there was the peak of the anaerobic threshold, it was still with many km.
Then the km decreased because there was the peak of the rhythms 10k-3k, followed by the wave of lactic works in which the km were few, but the caracteristic of Coe that he was to be able to do even 3 consecutive days of intense lactic work on 800-1500 rhythms.
Strength sessions also followed a simple periodization, there were 2 in aerobic threshold. they became 3 in anaerobic threshold, then returned to 2 in 10k-3k period, then in lactic period became only one.
They were total body sessions, typically one of weights in which the goal was to increase the number of sets and repetitions and a second, of strength-endurance, of two types: one of sets of infinite reps as 1 x 500 or 2 x 250 of half squat free body , or the circuits of 15 exercises, always free body.

I never took any claim that Seb/Peter made either explicitly or implicitly that Seb was more talented than his competitors. It always seemed to me that he was the most laser focused on training to be as fast as possible for 1-4 minutes of running at a time.

If a coach expects to get “results” out of 30mpw, 60mpw, 150mpw, they are coaching wrong. You run whatever mileage you need to race your best, not the other way around. Show me a coach with detailed summaries of each hard training session and some true analysis of those sessions, and that’s who will be producing the best race day times.

1981 interview where Coe states his mileage. In his own words: During the winter months he spent 6-7 hours per week in the gymnasium. And 75-80 miles per week with a mix of distance and speed work in the same period.

bbc.co.uk

Desert Island Discs - Sebastian Coe - BBC Sounds

BBCSounds

Roy Plomley's castaway is world champion athlete Sebastian Coe

Open link

Coe sure sucked over 3000-10,000m for running 120 miles a week.. but he's probably embellishing because he had pretty poor endurance, a pure speed cat.

Why are people so obsessed with Coe’s mileage? He was immensely talented and trained hard. Whether he ran 30 mpw or 120 mpw doesn’t matter. My assumption is that most people on these boards believe in high mileage or low mileage. In reality, most people aren’t as talented as Coe and they will need to put in the mileage whether you’re a miler or a marathoner. Most top milers are running 80-90+ miles per week. Feel free to believe that low mileage will work. You’ll likely never reach your potential that way.

20x100 lbs is a ton of steel. I’m sure he meant in aggregate not in a single lift