Fast guys who train/trained unconventionally

A few that come to mind in no particular order:

1) Mike Musyoki. Former half marathon world record holder. Apparently he ran for an hour a day every day. Some days he'd run 8 miles in that hour, and some days he'd run 12 if he felt good. He even had one day where he allegedly ran 13 miles on the best training run of his life.

2) Emil Zatopek. Had the weird stuff he tried out mentioned earlier, but the bulk was 200s and 400s at a good but not hard pace with 200m jog. He most often did 400s. His bread and butter was 20 x 400 with 200 jog. But he'd do it everyday. He sometimes did it twice a day and sometimes did more than 20, even doing as many as 60 400s in a single session on some occasions. He was relatively decent mileage I'm the 40s and 50s when mileage was very low. He also trained year round which was uncommon at the time. He was very open about his training. This caused more athletes and coaches to imitate him and make tweaks. Thanks to Zatopek intervals, higher mileage, and year round training were rapidly adopted by top runners. If you look at the rapid improvement in the 5k and 10k world records in the 40s and 50s, a lot of the credit goes to Zatopek. He helped modernize distance training with good old fashioned experimentation.

3) Bill Rodgers. High mileage, mostly easy, an occasional track workout usually at threshold, and lots of racing.

4) Mark Nenow. I've read that he just ran for an hour twice a day everyday except Sunday, Sunday he did a 2 hour long run. He would usually run the first mile slow in 8 or 9 minutes to shake out his legs then would often end up at low 5 or sub 5 pace at the end. I'm his 14 hours a week of running, he'd run anywhere from 140-150 mpw depending on how fit he was and only ever stepped on a track to race.

Wkipedia is correct. Arch turns up on my Facebook page occasionally. He's over 100 now and looks really good.

As I'm typing again another sort of unusual one that comes to mind is Van Nelson who ran the 10,000 at the '68 Olympics. He only did two things; two ten mile runs on days with no intervals, and a morning ten mile on interval days with an interval session later that was ALWAYS 220s and nothing else.

Elliot Giles has ran I believe 1:43 and 3:32 off of 10-15 mpw and 1-2 hours a day of easy-moderate elliptical training.

Nenow’s first run of the day was around 4pm and his second run was at 11pm.

Jim Spivey rarely exceeded 45 miles per week and preferred to be in the 35 range.

Kipchoge’s post marathon: day one 40 minutes slow, day two 1 hour slow, day 3 50 minutes moderate tempo run, then 10 days off with no running

I've read the book about him and his wife said this is a myth, he never ran with her on his back.

No need to spread misinformation here bro. .Jim Spivey ran unusually low mileage for a 1500m runner, but not that low.

1987: Week ending / mileage / notable race
May 9 / 73.0
May 16 / 60 3:59.3 Pepsi
May 23 / 70
May 30 / 60 3:37.49 Jenner
June 6 / 66 1:48.4 Pre
June 13 / 63 1:49.0 Boston
June 20 / 40 sick 3 days
June 27 / 52 3:43.66 USATF's, 1st (52.2 last 400)
July 4 / 45 3:51.91 Dream Mile Oslo, 2nd
July 11 / 62
July 18 / 38 3:55.62 Barcelona, 4th
July 25 / 74
Aug 1 / 73
Aug 8 / 66
Aug 15 / 45 3:47.46 1500m - Pan Am Games, 2nd
Aug 22 / 44 3:34.37 Zurich, 3rd
Aug 29 / 53 3:39.0 part of 4x1500m team in Dublin, 2nd fastest time by USA (3:43, 3:39, 3:46, 3:39.0)
Sept 6 / 46 3:38.82, World Champs Bronze medal, Rome
Sept 14 / 36 3:36.8 Brussles, Grand Prix final, 2nd
Sept 19 / 38 4:52.44 2000m Amerian Record, Lausanne
In comparison: 1993
April 3 / 63
April 10 / 49
April 17 / 77
April 24 / 62 13:58 5000m 1st Drake Relays
May 1 / 63 Treadmill test, 85.2 Sustainable max vo2 and highest vo2 of my career, 88.3
May 8 / 64 3:40.31 Indianapolis
May 15 / 57
May 22 / 55
May 29 / 52 3:41.57 Jenner, 3rd
June 5 / 63 13:25.92 5000m Pre, 3rd
June 11 / 54
June 19 / 45 USATF Oregon, 3:42.92 3rd
June 26 / 59 3:54.98 Indianapolis 3rd
July 3 / 50 3:36.45 Lille, 2nd
July 10 / 50 3:52.37 Oslo Dream mile 4th
July 17 / 60
July 24 / 56
July 31 / 56 3:39.38 Luxemburg, 1st
Aug 7 / 52 7:37.07 3000m Colonge, 3rd PR
Aug 14 / 48
Aug 21 / 44 3:37.41 World champs, 5th (Heat, semi and final)
Aug 28 / 40 3:54.78 Berlin
Sept 4 / 57 3:34.91 Reiti
Sept 11 / 46 3:36.28 Grand Prix final, London, 6th

So you can see he in fact rarely go BELOW 45 miles per week, even in the SUMMER RACING SEASON. I don't know where you got that from....

Take this for what it's worth but I have a friend who met Zatopek and visited for maybe a couple hours. He told me that Zatopek told him the stories of him, Zatopek, running with his wife on his back were true.

Danny Henderson's short rest interval training.

runningscience.co.za

Danny Henderson's training program & insight | Running Science

Insight into the training of the best elite distance runners in world. Explore the methods in elite runner Danny Henderson's training program.

Link:runningscience.co.za/elite-athletes-tr...

One more example that came to mind is Harald Norpoth. There were a couple old threads here that gave samples of his training and it does not look like what most of us would expect from a 3:39/13:20 guy with four championship medals, one being Olympic silver, a fourth and sixth place finish in two more Olympics, and a world record, in terms of either volume or intensity.