It's an interesting question. I see in his training logs he has 35 miles (I'm assuming the one 10-miler where no pace is listed is this) of slow running (7' pace), and 30 miles of moderate pace running (5:30-5:48 pace). I think most 1500m pros nowadays might find that (65 miles of easy/moderate running) excessive, and do a higher % of threshold training in an 80-90 mile week.
Most 1500 pros nowadays don't have 46 second open 400 speed either. I wonder if he and Coe are outliers among the top echelon of milers. ....High VO2 max fast twitchers with blazing speed versus the merely fast with monster threshold a la ElG and Jakob. Might be why his training was so polarized. Or maybe, given his XC chops, he would have been even better with modern threshold training and he could've dominated the 5k too.
Most 1500 pros nowadays don't have 46 second open 400 speed either. I wonder if he and Coe are outliers among the top echelon of milers. ....High VO2 max fast twitchers with blazing speed versus the merely fast with monster threshold a la ElG and Jakob. Might be why his training was so polarized. Or maybe, given his XC chops, he would have been even better with modern threshold training and he could've dominated the 5k too.
Yeah fair to say that those two were especially quick at the 400. Manangoi (yes whereabouts failure) is the only guy who really had those 400 wheels that we know about off the top of my head. That being said, a lot of the current top guys are not in the Jakob mold. Of the World Top 10 (ranking):
Jakob (Heavily strength-based) Wightman (Could run a decent quarter. 47-48low?) Abel Kipsang (same as Wightman) Cheruiyot (same as Wightman/Cheruiyot likely) Hoare (Strength-based) Katir (Strength-based) Kerr (Somewhere in the middle. 48?) Garcia-Romo (Somewhere in the middle. 48-49low?) Gourley (Somewhere in the middle. 48-49low?) Nuguse (Strength-based) McSweyn (Strength-based)
The emerging young talent Reynold Cheruiyot (3:33A solo) may be a hybrid. He is gone up well in his distance (5K in 13:04), but if you watch him run it looks like he's got a ton of speed.
It's an interesting question. I see in his training logs he has 35 miles (I'm assuming the one 10-miler where no pace is listed is this) of slow running (7' pace), and 30 miles of moderate pace running (5:30-5:48 pace). I think most 1500m pros nowadays might find that (65 miles of easy/moderate running) excessive, and do a higher % of threshold training in an 80-90 mile week.
Most 1500 pros nowadays don't have 46 second open 400 speed either. I wonder if he and Coe are outliers among the top echelon of milers. ....High VO2 max fast twitchers with blazing speed versus the merely fast with monster threshold a la ElG and Jakob. Might be why his training was so polarized. Or maybe, given his XC chops, he would have been even better with modern threshold training and he could've dominated the 5k too.
Ovett didn't either. He was a low 47 guy. Coe on the other hand.... We still have fast guys like Webb or Makhloufi who were in that range, but you see a lot more 48.5 guys with endurance these days. We are in the age of the 3:30/13:00 guy versus the 1:43/3:30
Ovett had the potential to run 7.30 / 13.00 no doubt about it. He wasn’t particularly bothered about running fast times - he just liked to win. Breaking the occasional world record was simply a bonus.
The criticism of top athletes not facing each other couldn't be leveled at the two top middle distance runners of 1978 in this end of season meet in London.I...
The inter counties wasn’t the trial race for world cross back then. And certainly not for the British team because there wasn’t one in world cross. The National was the selection race for the England team for world cross.
The inter counties wasn’t the trial race for world cross back then. And certainly not for the British team because there wasn’t one in world cross. The National was the selection race for the England team for world cross.
Correct on English v British World X-country team.
The Nationals was the trial race for many years, but it proved counter-productive being a tough 9 mile race shortly before the Worlds.
It was then switched to the Inter-Counties, earlier in the season and at the less demanding distance of 7 1/2 miles.
I actually ran the Inter-Counties on more than one occasion in that era, and at time ran in the same races as Steve Ovett (and Sebastian Coe), although I can't dignify what I did as "ran against."
I’m also surprised he didn’t run that fast at 3k and up but I also remember that he had that unfortunate knee injury.
gee, I hope that wasn’t from running too much
The knee injury was from falling on ice and hitting his knee on a church railing. The damage needed surgery for repair.
As far as his training is concerned, Ovett was a very rare beast, I believe, a combination of a lot of fast-twitch muscle fiber with high biomechanical efficiency and a huge V02 max.
He was an English Schools 400m champion and record holder, but at the same time he was second in the English Schools X-Country Championships.
He also won the Inter Counties X-Country Championships over 7 1/2 miles (then the selection race for the British Team for World X-Country) and ran well in the National X-Country Championships at 9 miles in the days when all the best distance runners would compete.
Of course there is also his 65:xx half-marathon on the hottest day of the English summer, in which he comfortably beat Olympic Marathon runner, Barry Watson, this just two weeks before the World Cup 1500m.
Given the way he defeated Rono in a new world best in 2 mile race which was run like a fartleck, I've always wondered if had it not been for his knee injury and the problems he suffered in the LA Olympics (which had ongoing effects), he wouldn't eventually have been best at 5000m. When well past his peak he won the Commonwealth Games 5000m easily beating Jack Buckner (who would win European 5000m later that year) and Tim Hutchings (fourth Olympic 5000m two years earlier).
Ovett was always good at 5000m. He ran 13:25 in 1977, losing to Yifter, but beating several other very good guys. And he ran 28:16 on the road for 10k.
Actually, Substation Goe was training at our high school track in Illinois and living with our coach in 1987, trying to get fit to make the 1988 British Olympic team. One workout, much to our dismay, that our coach picked up from him was 4 sets of 5 x 200. First set 60 sec. rest, 2nd set 45, 3rd set 30, and 4th set 15. No rest between sets, and we were obliged to either keep the initial pace AND try to speed up. I don't remember exactly, but I think Mr. Goe ran them around 26/27. What a gut buster, but also such an adrenaline rush!
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