Question about the ramifications of Coe's training philosophy on American distance runners

josephfishkin wrote:

You can try to skew this all you want, but Coe's status as an advocate of low mileage is unquestioned. Just think this through logically: Why would running, say, 16 miles at 7:00 pace help me get better at racing 800m well below sub 4:00 pace? It just doesn't make sense, scientifically or logically. That's why my HS runners run no more than 25-30 mpw. No injuries and career longevity.

It may not make sense, scientifically or logically, to you, but it worked for Peter Snell and quite a few other runners.

About Coe -- almost everyone overlooks the following. The 800m is probably the trickiest event in track to coach; you really need to match the training to the runner. This is precisely what Peter Coe did; he devised a training program that was optimized for his son for racing 800m-1500m.

It's clear from statements by Coe himself that he did in fact run high mileage at times. But he didn't really need to do that all the time, because he was already gifted with good endurance. He only needed to do blocks of mileage to keep it up. And he had good, but not great, speed. What he lacked naturally was power, and so a lot of his training was devoted to its development -- both running and supplemental strength training. As a result, his 400m times dropped year to year until he was as fast and strong as anyone in the world racing 800/1500.

So what the Coes did isn't a reasonable justification for keeping your kids' mileage low. On the contrary, some of them probably should be doing more. Some kids thrive on it and will continue to develop over time (cf. Malmo's training logs). But I'm certainly not going to fault you for erring on the side of caution.

My HS coach always said that anything more than 30 mpw was "junk mileage" that risked injury and didn't do anything to improve fitness. He got most of his training plans from Peter Coe if I remember correctly.

I wish Renato Canova would comment on this thread. Mr. Renato Canova, could you please deign to come in here and share your wisdom with the masses?

what is renato going to tell you?

that Coe was on EPO and test and his father, who was his coach, touted the virtues of EPO before it became illegal in a book that was later redacted?

how can Coe have run 3:47 30 years ago and no UK runners since come close? because their gene pool can't produce natural 3:47ers, only their pharmaceutical pool can produce this and they haven't had runners other than Paula Radcliffe willing to cheat like Coe did.

google paavo nurmi, who won many olympic golds in the 1920s, he was imbibing testosterone extract from bull balls. So too were the Nazis. i strongly suspect Ryun, Bannister, Snell, Elliott were all taking testosterone tonics because even to this day, few runners have been able to approach their times from their gene pool nations.

Look at pics of Bannister during his sub 4, he was a well-muscled brit in a rationed post WW 2 era. How many Brit runners now do you see so muscled up? None. Testosterone use was well known at the time and as a medical student, he would have been using any 'tonic' he could to help him do well.

Face reality. All our heroes used PEDs all of them. I suspect tjhe only athletes who don't need them are E Africans. why? they constantly produces wave after wave of athletes generation after generation who approach and surprass previous times by their countrymen. This tells you the ability is genetic, not pharmaceutical.

Why has no Kiwi broken Snell's 800m national record set over 50 years ago on a grass track?

Answer - A combination of talent, interest, and proper training.

By the way, Cram broke Coe's record.

there's a difference between doing high mileage and doing high mileage stupidly.

josephfishkin wrote:

More like those high mileage burnouts like Salazar and Ritzenhein. Their careers could've really been something had they subscribed to the Coe model.

josephfishkin wrote:

The thing people hate to admit is that Coe is right, and his training program has been proven correct. Look at El G or Lagat. Low mileage, high intensity. Leads to long and productive careers. Meanwhile, the high mileage Lydiard acolytes burn out after a few years. Is it any surprise that Edward Cheserek -- who is known to run no more than 45 miles per week -- is the best college runner in the nation?

Cheserek runs 85mpw

Lagat said since he's gotten older he's had to take an approach of running only 55mpw and only doing 6 sessions per week, but in his prime he was running 85mpw-90mpw, which is definitely typical for an elite 1500m runner, even Centrowitz said last December at NXN Salazar had him around 90mpw-100mpw

These guys aren't running that low of mileage, I'm not sure what El G was doing, but considering he was a strength based 1500m runner, I wouldn't doubt he was doing close to 85mpw-95mpw as well

yoyo12 wrote:

Webb's career trajectory is that of a runner on PEDs - likely EPO - he peaked in HS, where drug-testing was least stringent and shortly afterward before the bio passport. [How you run 3:54 at 18 and can't break 4 10 years later. This is the typical pattern of a cheater.]

Face reality instead of making these delusional threads.

"How you run 3:54 at 18 and can't break 4 10 years later. This is the typical pattern of a cheater."

Hahahaha I can't, post of the year?

Here's all the comment we need

[quote]yoyo12 wrote:

Like it is...

The harsh truth we're not accepting is Seb Coe was on EPO and likely test - his father in a first edition of a book running that was later redacted touted the virtues of EPO..

quote]

They didn't have synthetic EPO during the 80's, moron.

The first case of 'athletes' using EPO was the early 90's, long after Coe's career had finished.

It is impossible for Coe to have used EPO unless he had a time machine!

yoyo12 wrote:

what is renato going to tell you?

that Coe was on EPO and test and his father, who was his coach, touted the virtues of EPO before it became illegal in a book that was later redacted?

.

There is no such thing in any of his first edition books. Source? Evidence?

Are there any PROVEN benefits to high mileage training? I don't believe there are, which is why Peter Coe is the greatest distance coach this planet has ever seen. Work smarter, not harder.

"Work smarter, not harder."

Coe may have run fewer miles. That certainly was smart

training for him. But to say his training wasn't harder

than the extra jogging say Ovett did, is trying for dumbest

post of the week.

Here we go again! Coe and mileage! Let's be clear; Coe did cover fewer miles in training than many of his contemporaries - Ovett, Walker, Scott etc. - but when his father talked about his mileage you have to remember that a session such as 8x800 would be recorded as 4 miles for the day. Any warmup/down, jogging between intervals, easy morning runs would be ignored in the mileage count.

As for low mileage equating to easier training ...!!! you must be nuts! And it actually takes longer to complete the 8x800 session mentioned above than it does to lace up the trainers and head out of the door for a 10-15 mile run.(due to an extensive warmup and cool down) Coe may have trained less - in distance terms - than many of his contemporaries but he did not train easier!

Finally, why is it so difficult for some posters onthis site to grasp this fact? There is no one way of training for middle/long distance events that suits everybody. some athletes thrive on 120+ miles per week; others would be completely ruined by such a regime. as mentioned by another poster, Ovett and Cram did not train like Coe but achieved similar times (over 1500/mile at least).

I don't think either of the Coes purposefully tried to misrepresent Seb's training. Its just that neither Peter nor Seb were particularly good about disseminating information about training to the masses. Seb never sat down to write a training book like Ron Daws. If Seb wanted to publish a book on training it'd look a lot different than the snippets people took and ran with in the 90s.

118118 wrote:

yoyo12 wrote:

what is renato going to tell you?

that Coe was on EPO and test and his father, who was his coach, touted the virtues of EPO before it became illegal in a book that was later redacted?

.

There is no such thing in any of his first edition books. Source? Evidence?

Exactly. Coe was not on EPO. It wasn't even around in his peak years.

bradley the runner guy wrote:

I wish Renato Canova would comment on this thread. Mr. Renato Canova, could you please deign to come in here and share your wisdom with the masses?

Renato might tell us as he did a few weeks ago that Kenenisa Bekele at his peak was only doing 80-85 miles per week.

What do the letsrun OCD mileage obsessives have to say about that?

I think it's become clear that our most successful milers and marathoners both do put in a lot of time to excel. Back in the 70s and early 80s you still had plenty of amateur body builder-types who did hundreds of push ups and thousands of situps/crunches. That gave way to meatheads who just do their low reps at high weight. The same thing happened with running -- people wanted to spend less time achieving their results. Even to this day we have a few successful people who put in quality on 40mpw or are great (and maybe juiced) body builders doing just a few sets and reps, but even among them they are very detailed oriented about training smartly. Newcomers and novices won't emulate the quality athletes any better than they'll emulate the quantity athletes.

Huh?