Dathan Ritzenhein and Mr. Salazar's Training Methods

It really hasn't hurt me at all. I'm still the only guy who has ever run sub 30 on the UN Day Run course.

For what it's worth, I've talked to two different Kenyan marathoners (one being Mbarak Hussein) about their training and both said roughly the same thing. The most thing important is getting in two solid runs a day, about an hour in length. I asked about the long run and their descirptions were nearly identical: once every 14 days, 2-3 hours, easy pace or easy dropping to moderate pace (moderate pace being slower than MP). Then, the last 5k is HARD (almost all out, from their descriptions). Other weekly workouts were pretty normal track stuff, 1/4s and kilometers at decent speeds. But the way they talked about them, the other workouts were almost an afterthought, just part of any normal program.

Not saying I disagree, but when you perform poorly, no matter what you did leading up to race, people will point out that as the problem. If Ritz had run a 30 mile LSD, people would be saying it affected his turnover; highinsight is alway clear vision.

Perhaps it was just a bad race -or perhaps his body chemisty is not made for the marathon...I don't know. The way I see it, you need to be capable of running a 2:06 on a fast course or 2:08 on a slow course to be competitive on the world stage and I'm almost inclided to say why bother if you are capable of running sub-27 10K. Everything I know tells me that Ritz can be a very good marathoner, but then again I also think Bekele can be a good miler, but why would he bother.

I do disagree with you that Ritz should skip XC and the indoor season, I think shorter races is exactly what he needs. I would focus on the track for 2011 and perhaps do a half or 2 and prep for a 2012 as a marathon season.

I still think it is fumy how you guys try to spell one of the best marathon runners ever a lesson.Even Ritz has run faster then most of you ever would or even could.

I think Ritz just had bad tactics and maybe some injury problems at the end of the race and that he should race some more marathons before even considering if salazar did a good job or not.

I really hope he will be running another marathon in a couple of months and if they read here, they don't get to caught up with the stuff that some of you guys write over here.

unholy cumulus wrote:

For what it's worth, I've talked to two different Kenyan marathoners (one being Mbarak Hussein) about their training and both said roughly the same thing. The most thing important is getting in two solid runs a day, about an hour in length. I asked about the long run and their descirptions were nearly identical: once every 14 days, 2-3 hours, easy pace or easy dropping to moderate pace (moderate pace being slower than MP). Then, the last 5k is HARD (almost all out, from their descriptions). Other weekly workouts were pretty normal track stuff, 1/4s and kilometers at decent speeds. But the way they talked about them, the other workouts were almost an afterthought, just part of any normal program.

When you read what Canova says you get the opposite impression: that marathon training is extremely complex.

The funny thing here is the person who is formally writing "Mr Ritzenhein" and "Mr Salazar" is the same guy that has made numerous posts about his own sexual exploits in graphic details in the past.

X-Runner wrote:

The funny thing here is the person who is formally writing "Mr Ritzenhein" and "Mr Salazar" is the same guy that has made numerous posts about his own sexual exploits in graphic details in the past.

What are you talking about? I never did that. There are people on this site who are jealous about my running times, and use the fact that I live in Thailand to make stuff up about me.

I am just trying to be polite and respectful by using the personal pronoun "Mr." Perhaps you should learn to have some respect for people yourself.