Brazier: "Yeah, sure. I still don’t really count my mileage to this day,"

I don’t understand the quote

SUPERIOR COACH JS wrote:

There is no secret formula wrote:

To quote Marty Liquori:

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=376462

After 30 years being a national elite runner, 4 years being a coach,.... I can simply tell you Marty Liquari is wrong! And that "secret" is not about a shortcut, more about a smart scientific progressive approaches. :)

You've demonstrated a staggering lack of reading comprehension. For that alone you shouldn't be allowed to coach.

SUPERIOR COACH JS wrote:

There is no secret formula wrote:

To quote Marty Liquori:

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=376462

After 30 years being a national elite runner, 4 years being a coach,.... I can simply tell you Marty Liquari is wrong! And that "secret" is not about a shortcut, more about a smart scientific progressive approaches. :)

To quote Marty Liquori:

"All you need is a decent base, some leg turnover work and a lot of the scientific stuff is bullshit. "

As someone who ran 800m in HS and then D1, I wouldn't even know where to begin in counting my mileage.

In HS we typically did 2 laps as a warmup and 1 lap cooldown, and a bunch of strides/biomechnical exercises so maybe that's 4 laps. Then a bunch of sprints, but I don't really know how many. Sometimes the coach would have us go do this 1.5 mile loop around school a few times. I would typically sprint 400m or meters ahead of everyone else, go hide in the bushes and walk to a park, and wait for the team to complete the loop and rejoin and be done with that. All told I estimate my weekly HS mileage to be 15mpw, with the exception of my senior year when I made a concerted effort to include "long runs" of 8-10 miles on Saturday/Sunday to bring me to roughly 35mpw, but this was because I wanted to do well in the 1600m as well.

In college it's even more of a mess. Our warmups were really long and technical. Lots and lots of drills/strides and warming up itself took like an hour. No way to tell mileage for that. Same goes for cool downs, very long. We did a lot of sprint/interval training. We also had morning jogs and weekend long runs (10-12 miles or so). I estimate that us 800-3000m types were at 50-60mpw in college, with the true distance guys doing much more. But I have no clue, never counted.

TeeDb wrote:

When pushed, why does every low mileage 800m runner say they don't count the miles.

https://trackandfieldnews.com/tfn-interview-donavan-brazier/

if you aren't or never were an 800m runner, you'll never understand.

The mileage doesn't matter because a specific number of miles per weeks doesn't equate to good 800m running. No recipe.

When you hit your 200's or 300's or 400's at goal pace in practice, the jogging and cool down and warm up are the last things you think about. And when you have a coach recording splits, using a watch for strava isn't valuable or accurate.

let it go mileage fiends.....

this almost exactly perfectly encapsulates my experience (aside from the long runs in high school. i did a 7-miler once!)

when you spend 20 minutes doing drills and skips etc, you just focus on form and strength. Not reps or distance.

i usually lifted in the weightroom as long or longer than my track workout took.

Huge difference based on the type of runner you're training.

I know many HS 800m runners - somewhat injury prone - who ran about 10 miles a week. 1:53-2:00 guys. Something like 2-3 high quality workouts (200/300/maybe 400s), 2-3 easy days (20 minutes easy running and lots of dynamics) and 1-2 lifting days. These were almost always 400/800 guys. Trained their speed and just tried to hold on after 600m.

On the flip side, there are many 800/1500 guys who would plateau with this kind of training. Just depends who you are and what your goals are.

dont try and understand anyone who is good at the 800m training plan....they are freaks, they dont even know their own buildup....probably half of it is genetic, they just "know" when they are fit

macdaddy wrote:

Huge difference based on the type of runner you're training.

I know many HS 800m runners - somewhat injury prone - who ran about 10 miles a week. 1:53-2:00 guys. Something like 2-3 high quality workouts (200/300/maybe 400s), 2-3 easy days (20 minutes easy running and lots of dynamics) and 1-2 lifting days. These were almost always 400/800 guys. Trained their speed and just tried to hold on after 600m.

On the flip side, there are many 800/1500 guys who would plateau with this kind of training. Just depends who you are and what your goals are.

The most talented 800m runner I ever saw (and this is coming from a guy who ran 1:50) was this kid on my team in HS. He was a huge pothead and smoked cigarettes. Literally did like 2 laps of running each day in practice, HATED it. Literally sat down and refused to do any of our workouts because he was forced to be there as a consequence of his discipline issues at school and the coach couldn't throw him off the team. So he would "trot" with the JV girls (the cuties) for the 2 lap warmup, and then go chill with the field event guys so we could lay on the grass.

He ran a 1:58 or so 800m his freshman year. Unbelievable. I was a 1:50 guy at the time but I had only run 2:01 or so my freshman year, and I didn't smoke cigarettes and I did do like 15mpw. This guy smoked my freshman time while literally smoking cigarettes and literally doing no running in practice.

To this day I wish he had kept up the running. I tried my best to motivate him, tell him about going to a top college for free and making a lot of $$$, but then he disappeared from school the following year and I assume he ended up at a community college and in prison at some point.

For the shorter distances, natural talent trumps all else.

D$ wrote:

dont try and understand anyone who is good at the 800m training plan....they are freaks, they dont even know their own buildup....probably half of it is genetic, they just "know" when they are fit

This is true. The distances are over so quickly that you just either have the legs to win or you don't. You can tell usually within 50m whether or not it's going to be your day or not. If you feel like you're floating through the air effortlessly, then all you need to do is make sure you don't overcook the first 600m and it's game over. And when you're running neck and neck down the final stretch, you just "know" you have an extra gear and you're going to outkick the other guy.

well you don't need to count mileage.

but you want to keep a record for cause and effect.

brazier must keep a tight record of the quality work, to the 1/10 of a second.'

really 800 is 2 to 3 workouts at pace, and the rest is like 30 minute to an hour at most other days.

you want to keep track of the off days approximate mileage, and monitor how much works best.

after all, just running in volume increases vo2 max. but hurts speed.

It's useful to know what you've done if you ever move or aren't in a position to consult your coach.

"It's simply not that important, sometimes difficult and really misleading for 800 m runners to count their mileage"

I can't believe we keep having this debate on this site.

There are different types of 800 runner. Several Olympic champions have been high mileage types -Snell, Wottle, Ovett- and some that were relatively low volume runners - Juantorena for example. (And this is without the long running (pun intended!) debate about Coe's mileage!)

Some 800 runners thrive off high volume, others would be destroyed by such a programme and benefit from a more quality focused regime. No one way is right, more than one way to skin a cat.

The best “training” for the 800 is soccer. Do soccer players count mileage?

Summary: OP goes home devastated

Only hobby joggers count mileage.

E H Motorcar wrote:

Used to be Coached wrote:

This is, I think, the correct answer. I don't know why people are ripping you for it, but for what it's worth, this is exactly how I used to operate. A lot of elites are like that, and that's the God's truth.

Look, some people are into tracking all their numbers and having a pretty training log. Alan Webb was like that. Others just want to show up, do the workout, and go home. Both approaches can lead you to success. It sounds like Brazier has found a routine that works for him, but of course the Let's Run posters think they know better.

It's useful to know what you've done if you ever move or aren't in a position to consult your coach.

okay but he isn't blacking out while he's training. he knows what he's done. it is deliberate practice that requires focus and presence of mind. there just isn't a mileage count. but the kind of effort to put in on a day is known, how much recovery to take, etc.

im sure a lot of people recording their mileage are actually quite a bit less cognizant of their training than people who don't tally mileage but are actually mentally engaged and not "just run baby" hobby joggers

if you are doing drills on an unmarked field, do you know if you did high knees for 25m or 30m? no way. it's just not important to know. but if a new coach is making you do high knees for 40m, you would know that that feels unnecessarily long. mileage in general would be the same. it would be very easy to notice and say "coach this is more than i used to do. are you purposely increasing my volume?" without having to consult logs

E H Motorcar wrote:

Used to be Coached wrote:

This is, I think, the correct answer. I don't know why people are ripping you for it, but for what it's worth, this is exactly how I used to operate. A lot of elites are like that, and that's the God's truth.

Look, some people are into tracking all their numbers and having a pretty training log. Alan Webb was like that. Others just want to show up, do the workout, and go home. Both approaches can lead you to success. It sounds like Brazier has found a routine that works for him, but of course the Let's Run posters think they know better.

It's useful to know what you've done if you ever move or aren't in a position to consult your coach.

You don't need to count mileage to "know what you've done." I didn't count mileage in high school, but I still remember our training in detail all these years later. Easy runs were 50 minutes. Long runs were 70-90 minutes depending on the time of year. Main mid-season workouts were 5 X 1000m w/ 3 minutes rest and 8 X 1000m w/ 1 minute rest. I could absolutely jump right back into my high school training today if I so desired based on my memory of what we did. Knowing exactly how much distance I covered in any given week or any single easy run just isn't that important.