Harald Norpoth, 13:20/5000 only trained once a day

Ghostbusters is wrong again - Norpoth was a light trainer, even in the era in which he ran (60's-70's) rarely spending more than 60-75 minutes per day total running time.

On many occasions Norpoth would simply take days off, especially when travelling. He was not obsessed with mileage, and he usually only covered around 50-60 miles a week during his career - with high mileage peaks at 70 miles a week.

Norpoth was not a slave to the track or stop watch. Like many Germans he would run 'by feel' in the forest, and his sessions were probably a lot easier than the few rivals who could run the times he ran.

Some people simply do not want to deal with the fact that there are world class runners able to achieve world class times, on a training schedule of 60 minutes a day average.

Another runner - Mark Smet of Belgium was a once a day runner and ran 2:10 for the Marathon. He rarely ran for more than 60 minutes.

John Farrington, Australia, found his best success running two '30 minute' runs per day, with a '10' mile on Sundays and ran 2:11 on that type of training.

Pierre Liardet, a French farmer, trained just 35 miles a week, and was many times selected for France at cross country and 10.000 track, where he ran 28:30 for 10.000 track.

Pierre claimed that running around after his animals all day on the farm and the hills reduced the need for heavy mileage. He ran naturally in the fields, and never trained on the track. Something like Jack Foster of New Zealand, 2:11 marathon, and unstructured training in the hills.

Ghost

coach:

christophe_moulton@yahoo.ca

ricer wrote:

If I recall correctly, he's the one that Prefontaine always used to gripe about. Norpoth apparently used to draft off Pre and outkick him with 200m to go. Pre thought it was "chickenshit", I think today we call it "racing."

Actually, today we call it 'having balls' (i.e. Mottram sitting on Bekele until the last 300 and kicking)

There was a thread here some years back on van Aaken and Norpoth training started by Antonio Cabral, who evidently knew Norpoth somewhat and who eventually put the examples of Norpoth's training into the thread. Hodgie-san put those examples onto his website. The article on Hodgie-san's website was from a German website which I translated so Bob could include that.

Because I know that van Aaken was a big mileage coach, I thought that Norpoth's examples were a bit light on the km's, so I asked Antonio about that. He replied that the samples he'd put up were definitely "racing season" training and that in the winter Norpoth typically would run for about 75 minutes a day, occasionally longer and that his weekly mileage might have gotten to 80 or so at times.

In the article from the website there is also a comment about the benefits of having some 60 km days, but it's a very vague comment and may or may not mean that Norpoth actually did that much. Nothing in the van Aaken book shows Norpoth running that much. All that's mentioned are days when he'd do the 17-18 km that someone else mentioned.

As to the once a day thing, I haven't seen anything that shows he ever did more. Antonio's training samples only show one session. When I asked Antonio about it he replied that Norpoth NEVER trained more than once a day, which was what Norpoth said in the story Track and Field News did about him at the end of his career.

HRE wrote:

There was a thread here some years back on van Aaken and Norpoth training started by Antonio Cabral, who evidently knew Norpoth somewhat and who eventually put the examples of Norpoth's training into the thread. Hodgie-san put those examples onto his website. The article on Hodgie-san's website was from a German website which I translated so Bob could include that.

Van Aaken and Harald Norporth training insights

the one who has been posting on here as 'Ghost busters' is different to me who was asking questions the other day, which remain unanswered by the way. I'm not all that bothered abotu some german from 30-odd years ago, except to say 13.20 is good, but in the grand scheme of things its slower than the likes of Moorcroft who did a lot more training. Deduce from that what you want.

Living in the Past wrote:

Are you sure that Harald Norpoth ran the 1,500 meters in the 1971 European Championships in Helsinki? Norpoth ran the 5,000 meters. Neither he nor Jean Wadoux could match Juha Vaatainen over the last lap. Vaatainen ran the last 400 meters in 52.8 seconds. Norpoth finished third.

http://62.232.35.140/athletics-heroes/stats_athletics/european/1971_m.asp

LITP, thanks for catching that. Once again, Francesco Arese (Italy) gets no respect.

Question for anyone - since Norpoth got 2nd in 1964 Tokyo Olympics, did he compete at 1962 European Champs?

Also, people are making comments about his limited mileage, but is that including his warm-up and warm down after every session. Plus, if he was running in the forest, I am sure there was plenty of informal fartlek/surges, etc.

Comments, anyone.

ghost busters wrote:

the one who has been posting on here as 'Ghost busters' is different to me who was asking questions the other day, which remain unanswered by the way. I'm not all that bothered abotu some german from 30-odd years ago, except to say 13.20 is good, but in the grand scheme of things its slower than the likes of Moorcroft who did a lot more training. Deduce from that what you want.

Moorcroft was a 13.20 runner too, until one day, knowing he was in good shape, having run a 3.49 mile ten days before, he decided to go for the World record, and the rest is history.

It's very gracious of you to admit that 13.20 is good.

Norpoth is one of the more under-recognized greats. His failure to capture Olympic gold was not entirely his fault. He was a classic sit-and-kick guy (drove Pre nuts). In the 5000 at the 64 Olympics the track was wet and muddy, so that likely took a bit of the sting out of his kick (and Schul ran the race of his life). Norpoth still got silver and beat Kip Keino, Ron Clarke, Bill Dellinger and Michel Jazy in that race, quite a field. He had another shot in the 1500m at in Mexico City in 68, but as with Jim Ryun, who placed two spots in front of him, the high altitude took the sting out of his kick (I'm not saying he could have beaten Ryun at low altitude, but he would have had a better shot at a medal). By the time Munich came up in 72, he was pretty much past his prime, but still finish fifth (and tortured Pre by repeatedly beating him in other races around that time). He's kind of a "what might have been" guy.

Who cares about Political Correctness. The Massachusetts legistlature just DENIED the people of the Commonwealth their RIGHT as citizens to say yea or nay to Gay Marriage via voting 45-117 AGAINST putting it on a statwide referendum.

I don't care what you ARE, but don't take away my RIGHTS.

PTOOIE on Political Correctness and the swine that are serving on Beacon Hill and in DC (especially in re the Illegal Immigrant Amnesty Bill).

Some people simply do not want to deal with the fact that there are world class runners able to achieve world class times, on a training schedule of 60 minutes a day average.

Ghost,

I do not understand your "OBSESSION" with thinness and runners who achieve a high level with very minimal training.

Look, you know very well that most distance runners around the world train almost twice as much as Harold Northpoth did.

yes, from time to time you will find some who will achieve great success with less training than the typical training that is necessary to compete with the best in the world. But seriously how many Harold Nortpoth are out there? How many in the world right now are placing as high as Nortpoth did at the olympics with such "minimal training"? or training only once a day? How many 10, 20, 30?

I don't know about the rest of this board but I'm certainly more interested in learning about the training methods of the typical distance runner than an Anomaly like Norpoth.

Norpoth won 3 European Cup 5000m finals, one in 1967 in 15:26 which included a last 800m of 1:53.4

Whilst not knowing Ghost's motivations I do enjoy reading about the various methods of training successful runners have used.

I agree that to be a sub 13 or sub 27 or sub 2.07 guy you will almost certainly be running at least 2 x day and upwards of 150km per week. However most runners I know are married guys or ladies who work 40-80 hrs per week without the basic talent to near world class times. Their goals are to achieve the best times they can within the restraints of their lifestyles and abilities.

Ghost usually posts about runners who have done quite well despite limitations to the amount of training they were prepared to do, most runners can relate to these people.

Of course we could all go out and run 500km per week with 140km long runs and end up like the iconic American hero Gerry L.

Ghost mentioned John Farrington. Farrington was a typical case of what I'm talking about. He had tried big mileage, but injuries and work restricted him. He simply would run 1/2 an hour in his lunch break - usually covering 9- 9.6kms.

He would then head out for another 1/2 hour run before heading home, usually some track reps. He did longer running on weekends.

He improved from 2.21 to 2.12 in the first year of doing this. Probably the year of 240km weeks stood him in good stead. With his injuries and life under control he was able to reap the rewards. He ran 2.12 the next 2 years then 2.11 to lead the world lists in 1973. He ran 2.14 in 74 and was still running 2.17 in 76.

Steve Austin was a top competitor in Australia for many years. He ran 3.57 ml, 8.23 2ml, 13.22, 27.53. He was very consistent over a number of years. He was also 15th in the world xc.

Steve did this with a family and for much of his career worked as a brick layer. He typically only ran 100km per week.

And Jack Foster ran a 2:11 masters world record eons ago running pretty much once a day. What's the point? Are there examples of runners who have run well on relativley little running? Yes. Are there more runners who have run well while running a lot? Yes. What is a lot? A lot is likely more than you want to do and more than you are currently doing.

Alan

Mopak most runners with work and family obligations can not relate with nortpoth types or any other runner who achieve high success with "minimal training"

Why?

Because most runners with work and family obligations do not possess nowhere near the type of talent that nortpoth had.

Ghost does make very good posts from time to time but every once in a while he makes some very bizarre comments such as "Burundi has not come close to producing a world class runner"

When we all know what Venuste Nyongabo did!

"May 24th: w/up 21 min. + 6X500m/74-72-74-72-74-67 sec. rec=2 min. + 6 min. c/d"

Okay, this is a "holy crap" moment for me. A 67 for 500m at the end of that workout?!?!

Yeah, I don't think I would have wanted the guy to be even with me, with 200m to go...

Herewego again wrote:

Ghost,

I do not understand your "OBSESSION" with thinness and runners who achieve a high level with very minimal training.

Look, you know very well that most distance runners around the world train almost twice as much as Harold Northpoth did.

yes, from time to time you will find some who will achieve great success with less training than the typical training that is necessary to compete with the best in the world. But seriously how many Harold Nortpoth are out there? How many in the world right now are placing as high as Nortpoth did at the olympics with such "minimal training"? or training only once a day? How many 10, 20, 30?

I don't know about the rest of this board but I'm certainly more interested in learning about the training methods of the typical distance runner than an Anomaly like Norpoth.

Herewego again

You are right. Most distance runners around the world they train twice a day some 100miles or more and they include 2 hours long run and 3 hard workouts weekly but they also have their jobs, their families and their duties and despite that they do all that training stuff they just run 14:00 or 15:00 or 16:00 for 5000m if not slower.

This is what i would call the training "OBSESSION", or trash training if you wish. That´s a training obssession and a waist of time relate to their poor performances.

All right may be they get satisfaction while training so much and so hard, but this is what Ghost want to say: that´s is a very poor an ineficient way of training according their performance standards.

How many poor performers do you know that they train like the olympics ?

From an interview with Norpoth (2006):

Ich war nicht schneller. Ich war nur ausgeruhter.

Translated:

I was not faster. I was only more rested.

What these training samples show me is that it is possible to be running fairly close to your best potential without extreme workloads. This is encouraging to those of us who have running a little lower on the priorities, perhaps below family and job. It also gives some ideas on how to organise a reasonable program of running around the other areas in our lives.

As a young man I ran quite big volume, often training with world class runners. Despite this I was never very fast.

These days running is an enjoyable sport that I squeeze into my lifestyle. Given family and work commitments, an hour is usually the maximum available time for my running. Some days only 15-30mins. Sometimes after a 16-18hr work day I decide sleep is my best training option.

Runningart2004 wrote:

And Jack Foster ran a 2:11 masters world record eons ago running pretty much once a day. What's the point? Are there examples of runners who have run well on relativley little running? Yes. Are there more runners who have run well while running a lot? Yes. What is a lot? A lot is likely more than you want to do and more than you are currently doing.

Alan

The point is that it takes huge talent to be able to absorb the kind of training that world class runners do. Just as the human body wasn´t meant to be a couch potato, it wasn´t constructed to be able to run several hours a day. I know that it is hard to accept for many people, but most runners can´t train effectively on that type of workload, and would probably be better off a somewhat more moderate schedule (Gerry Lindgren and his fanclub can say whatever they want).