Just read "The Golden Mile" by Herb Elliott -- wow, just wow

truthhurts wrote:

all top runners in the 50s and 60s - esp American and Euro runners - were using testosterone. It started with Paavo Nurmi.

I'm sure Ryun, Bannister and Elliott used. It wasn't illegal and it improved performnace and recovery.

This is why runners to this day in the same gene pools have a hard time duplicating the performances of Ryun, Bannister and Elliott. Biological passport and drug testing makes testosterone use difficult so there is a reversion to the depressing mean - far below African athlete - and not even at the level of drug-loaded cheats like Ryun, Bannister and Elliott.

Hard truth.

Any hard evidence to offer?

truthhurts wrote:

all top runners in the 50s and 60s - esp American and Euro runners - were using testosterone. It started with Paavo Nurmi.

I'm sure Ryun, Bannister and Elliott used. It wasn't illegal and it improved performnace and recovery.

This is why runners to this day in the same gene pools have a hard time duplicating the performances of Ryun, Bannister and Elliott. Biological passport and drug testing makes testosterone use difficult so there is a reversion to the depressing mean - far below African athlete - and not even at the level of drug-loaded cheats like Ryun, Bannister and Elliott.

Hard truth.

Yes, I picked up that Percy considered himself a "maker of men" and, in today's parlance, more of an advisor/consultant than a coach. And, yes, I picked up that he didn't write detailed schedules for the runners. My comment about Elliott's training with Cerutty was short-hand in a laundry list of possible factors that could have made Elliott, were he running today, an even faster runner. That's obviously arguable, but my speculation on the point didn't require an explanation of exactly how Elliott and Cerutty worked together. The point is that perhaps modern training methods versus what Elliott was doing (and who was making the call on the daily routine) could have been yet another source of incremental improvement when we speculate about what Elliott's theoretical maximum performance might have been. Yes, I also understand that Elliott seems to think he reached his maximum...though surely he would at least consider modern tracks and increased competition a source of faster times.More generally re Cerutty and Elliott, this idea that Elliott was entirely training himself and that Cerutty had no idea what Elliott was doing seems exaggerated. Sure, Cerutty wasn't writing detailed daily training schedules to cover the entire year, but Elliott obviously had extended training periods at Portsea and Cerutty definitely knew what Elliott was doing. And when Elliott and Cerutty were both in Melbourne (which was most of the time during those years, though not seeing each other every day of course), he presumably had some idea what Elliott was up to since he saw him at Portsea on most weekends.The kind of comments by Cerutty that HRE cited seem like off-the-cuff remarks intended to deliver his PR message that (a) he was a maker of men who could be their own guides and (b) he didn't believe in fixed schedules because he thought it inhibited the freedom of the athlete's mind and body, etc etc (or however he would have described it) to the detriment of performance. Either that, or he was referring to what Elliott was doing when Elliott was home in Perth.

Welp go back to class wrote:

I agree with everything you said except for when you said he trained with good but not ideal coaching with Percy Cerutty. Wrong. Even Herb Elliot himself has said he would no have been great if he did not train with Percy. Herb actually didn't train with Percy. Percy gave Elliot the confidence to train himself. I'm surprised you reada the whole book and did not pick up on that. I actually haven't read it so I don't know what spin they put in his training. It was mostly self-driven and Percy would verily give advice, indeed but the athletes were in charge of their miles.

truthhurts wrote:

all top runners in the 50s and 60s - esp American and Euro runners - were using testosterone. It started with Paavo Nurmi.

I'm sure Ryun, Bannister and Elliott used. It wasn't illegal and it improved performnace and recovery.

Do you have any evidence for this?

I thought that someone like Bannister trained very lightly so why would he be needing something to improve recovery?

Another Masters Runner wrote:

Given slow tracks, lack of pacers, lack of PEDs, his relative youth when retiring, his limited number of years competing, and his good but probably not ideal training from Cerutty, ...

Once again I know I will offend scores of naive people, but bullshit. The 1950's was when amphetamines hit sports. They were not only legal, they were over-the-counter.

I know the top performers of this era are heroes, even gods to many. But enough is enough - a head-in-the-sand attitude does no service to the sport. Let's call a spade a spade. It took 50 years to get the mile world record from 4:12 to 4:06. Then suddenly, between the late '30's (around when

was introduced) and the 1960's, it dropped by leaps and bounds. 4:01 by the end of the war, multiple runners reaching sub 4 by the mid 50's and then another 5 seconds to 3:54 by 1958. 6 seconds in over 50 years followed by 12 seconds in less than 20, including 5 in just 4 years.

In any other era, you'd be hearing the "D" word constantly every time this progression was mentioned. But when it comes to the 50's and 60's, the merest suggestion of the slightest suspicion of the faintest blemish is utter heresy. I suppose because everyone who competed then is now so elderly and defenseless that anything impugning the sports world in their day, true or not, is somehow a direct and intolerable assault on their character. Never mind that it was legal then, that nobody's "accusing" them of anything - they now must be venerated by today's standards as well as yesterday's. The thinking seems to be that if doping wasn't banned yet, that's because nobody was doing it. The IOC was surely just being preemptive when they started testing, and the mile WR progression just happened to screech to a halt at exactly the same time. The paradigm of track's ever-shrinking fan base is to look the other way.

And that's why track is dead. A sport that tries to make itself look clean when it obviously isn't can't compete, even against sports that are obviously dirty but admit it, such as MMA. People can tell that track's show of anti-doping reveals just the tip of the iceberg. It is no use pretending that it's clean. And it's no use pretending that it was clean before the 70's either. Doping has to be dug up by the roots if track is to be saved. Like it or not, that means revising history with the equivalent of a "legal doping era" asterisk.

A final word about "proof." You don't need proof to suspect something. A fan is a customer. A customer who suspects deception doesn't need to prove that suspicion to reject the product. Rather the vendor must prove that the suspicion is false. If they cannot, they fail to sell the product and go bankrupt. Many will rail at me about "proof," but they are in fact killing their own sport.

I have owned a copy of The Golden Mile for over 35 years and still read it on a regular basis. I recently purchased a copy of Cerutty's book "Athletics; How To Become a Champion" written in 1959 - after Herb had set his first WRs but before Rome. I first read this book as a 14 year old aspiring gold medalist(!) - weren't we all at that age- and have read numerous books on the subject since but without a doubt this is the best book on running ever written.

Ceruuty believed that an athlete should spend 6 months of the year on the "conditioning" process - building a base in modern jargon. He believed in some long runs but not consistent high mileage. He says that even for marathon runners if they exceed much more than 400 miles a month they end up running too slow in their training to condition the body to run at the speeds of WR marathons. for a middle distance runner like Elliott Cerutty suggested something arpoud 50-70 miles a week - but most of this at intense effort. Hard slogging runs of up to 10 miles through loose sand, hard fartlek sessions where the effort is eased slightly merely to allow enough recovery for another hard effort and hill reps up grassy slopes and sand dunes (at Portsea). All this running to be done as strongly as possible. No set schedule because only the athlete can tell when his body needs a break from this toil. also 2-3 sessions with weights using the heaviest weights the athlete is capable of lifting. So this is not a Lydiard type programme by any stretch of the imagination.

Cerutty did not set down in detail what an athlete should do on a day to day basis; rather he outlined the basic philosophy and let the athlete get on with it, merely checking that the athlete was working along the right lines from time to time. Interestingly, Elliott says in his book that more often than not Cerutty would reduce an athletes self imposed workload; he certainly appreciated the value of rest in an athletes programme.

Finally, all this stuff about Elliott etc. taking substances that are now illegal. Complete nonsense! Where do you think Elliott would get hold of this stuff in Australia at this time? Why not simply accept that Herb was the greatest miler who ever lived and Cerutty was a genius?

Does Elliott mention Percy waving the towel in the 1500 final in Rome?

There are many good comments here that are worth replying to.

There is a difference between stating the possibility that athletes may have used some sorts of drugs, which was certainly true in the 50s and 60s and actually smearing the names of specific athletes with accusations of drug use. And doing the latter is especially obnoxious when the unfounded accusations are presented as "hard truth." Get something that remotely resembles evidence and get back to us. These comments are yet another example of the "I can't believe anyone could be that good so they must have used drugs" thinking that is understandable but unjustified.

In the 50s two of Lydiard's runners, Bill Rodger and Bill Baillie spent quite a long time in Oz, maybe a year or so. I'm not sure. They trained with Cerutty during that time. Baillie later said that there was very little difference between what they were doing with Cerutty from what they'd done with Lydiard. There was probably a lot more difference in the way each coach later presented what they did from what they actually did. There really are only so many ways to skin a cat. The obvious differences seem to be Cerutty's emphasis on weight lifting and running form.

I agree that comment about having no clue as to what Elliott did in training was off the cuff and done for affect. Obviously Cerutty knew what Elliott was doing when they were both at Portsea so the comment does seem disingenuous. But I've always thought that today we're too bogged down on minutiae and hair splitting when we think about training methods and more or less ignore the "intangible" aspects which I believe are much more important and Cerutty's comment alludes to the importance of your approach to skinning the cat relative to the actual technique used to do it.

GREAT write up...thank you...I have a pretty in depth collection of vintage track and running books but not this one...coincidentally, have on my bedside rable to read next "The Herb Elliott Story" (also out of print...another awesome read from the Era is Peter Snell's "No Bugles, No Drums"... Thanks again!

MF

If Elliott had continued, he would have had to deal with Snell. That might have ended up being the rivalry for the ages that never happened. Even better than Coe v. Ovett.

The section on Herb Elliott in How They Train is the least detailed, something like "He runs a lot of mileage, mostly at a steady pace. Sometimes he runs repeat 220s or 440s, but no real pattern. Training is the same year round." This is in contrast to the rest of the guys in the book with structured interval workouts 5-6 times a week.

Don't forget;Clean Pair of Heels - Murray HalbergThe Lonely Breed - Ron ClarkeIf you're just interested in reading them, (vs. owning them), you can find them on Google Books.

MikeF wrote:

GREAT write up...thank you...I have a pretty in depth collection of vintage track and running books but not this one...coincidentally, have on my bedside rable to read next "The Herb Elliott Story" (also out of print...another awesome read from the Era is Peter Snell's "No Bugles, No Drums"... Thanks again!

MF

To the OP, less than ideal conditions were ideal for Herbs's personality. The less than ideal conditions were an open door to mental passages that no other athlete has ever gone down... Undefeated, much. if Elliot was coached by ideal modern conditions he woul have lost some races. Period.

Great post and thread

I'm pretty sure that "The Herb Elliott Story" is the American edition of "The Golden Mile". Enjoy!I wanted to weigh in earlier on the comments/accusations about PEDs but didn't have the time. The idea that Elliott was on steroids is ludicrous. From my understanding, the German athletes were probably using them in 1936 and probably the Soviets in the 50s, but steroids weren't commercially available in the U.S. until 1960. It's no secret that they were used by the US weightlifting team for the 1960 olympics, so I don't think that anyone who was involved was hiding their usage (it wasn't banned as far as I know). I agree with the earlier comment that it's silly to think that Elliott and Cerutty would have gotten hold of steroids in Australia by 1958.Admittedly, my comment about "lack of PEDs" was sloppy since I know that amphetamines were more widely available during that era. I have no reason to believe that Elliott was using them though, and I'm not sure that amphetamines would help as much as such PEDs as steroids and EPO (I could be wrong on that though).

MikeF wrote:

GREAT write up...thank you...I have a pretty in depth collection of vintage track and running books but not this one...coincidentally, have on my bedside rable to read next "The Herb Elliott Story" (also out of print...another awesome read from the Era is Peter Snell's "No Bugles, No Drums"... Thanks again!

MF

That would have been crazy if he had run the marathon in Rome and beaten Abebe Bikila. You could make a case that the whole subsequent history of athletics might have been different.

His coach expected Elliott to break every world record from the 800m to the marathon.

Coevett gets a ton of criticism on these boards, some of it well deserved. But for digging up this nine year old absolutely awesome thread, he gets a big thanks.

A lot of great great stuff in here. Of course, accompanied by some real trash. Good reading for snow days!

Great book. My young athletes are up at altitude reading 'the Golden Mile' 'No Bugles, No Drums' and the 'Unforgiven Mile'. Reading about Elliott, Snell, and Clarke and chase for the ages.

PC to HE "You may run faster.... but youll never run harder than that!" [PC to HE eyes bulging mouth rictoid tachycardic frenzy after a Portsea dune session]

Harry Wilson did this with his group inc the young SO in the early 1970s at Merthyr Mawr, a coastal dune camp modeled patently on Portsea.

Herb was an alltime great and even the ascendant Peter Snell feared the idea of HEs presence at the 62 EG.

The "This is your life" tribute to Snell made by NZ TV in 2000 featured HE saluting Snell and with regard to the fact they never raced each other in a major champs, telling him "Id tan your @rse"

That show is mustsee TV for all LR activists featuring live appearances by Roger Moens George Kerr Murray Halberg John Walker and Arthur all paying tribute to Snell.