Arkansas Runners- McDonnell Era

That's pure gold right there.

Good stuff little rockin. If people are looking for "magic" from John's coaching, they won't find it. From Jim Ryan, to Shorter/Rodgers, to all the greats in the 80's and 90's including Lindgren, it seems to be nothing simpler than outwork and outsmart your competitors, at whatever level. As most all of us know, the way to get better is to do 4X 1M faster in training than you have before, and you will probably race faster. Ryun once said that when he was running a 14 miler in the winter, he at least knew that if his competition wasn't, he was just that much tougher than they were.

schief wrote:

Hi everyone, I wanted to make a quick apology for anything that detracted from the spirit of the program. Just as Coach Mac would have said to me in the past "Kid, you have to keep your cool."

To my fellow alumni, and any fans out there. My apologies.

JS - Signing off.!

I want to say I'm sorry also ... to John Schiefer. I commented on something I know nothing about and in the interest of full disclosure: I have never met Schief. It was a figure of speech about seeing lots of posts in the TnF listserver days and tnfmedia.com days.

Sometimes I am a loudmouth, and have to "cool it" as well. Luckily I sometimes realize after the fact at least.

Bump

It would be great to get this thread going again. There was plenty of great stories bring thrown about.

What do you want to know? I just heard of this thread...I see there has been some previous attention paid to it ;)

bump

What was the training like in the offseason?

calling all hogs

I wasn't a Hog but according to a Harrier interview with McDonnell summer training was pretty simple. They probably needed that recovery from a 9 month racing schedule.

Probably typical 60-90 miles a week of road work.

I also remember a quote of his which I agree with about never getting too out of shape. McDonnell wasn't a big believer in the "big peak". He thought athletes should always be able to stay within a few weeks close to their mile pr ability all year round.

They weren't a high mileage program, and the core was middle distance.

With the training and racing intensity that group did, I doubt the short 3 month off season every year was very specific. But former athletes would know and I shouldn't comment.

break it up wrote:

I wasn't a Hog but according to a Harrier interview with McDonnell summer training was pretty simple. They probably needed that recovery from a 9 month racing schedule.

Probably typical 60-90 miles a week of road work.

I also remember a quote of his which I agree with about never getting too out of shape. McDonnell wasn't a big believer in the "big peak". He thought athletes should always be able to stay within a few weeks close to their mile pr ability all year round.

They weren't a high mileage program, and the core was middle distance.

With the training and racing intensity that group did, I doubt the short 3 month off season every year was very specific. But former athletes would know and I shouldn't comment.

Funny timing about this thread, I was just talking to my wife about Joe Falcon today. I remembered that article on him in Runner's World while doing a road trip this morning. There's a shot of him on the first page of the article running up a hill near his house. The November before the '92 trials I met Joe Falcon at a race in Louisiana. I got his number in case he was interested in finding a place before the trials in New Orleans that year. Later, when it was pretty clear he was going to the trials, I helped him get a place on the north shore for about a month before the trials. My grandparents lived there and we knew it was pretty easy to get to, a few tracks, and, close enough to New Orleans to get to Tad Gormley stadium easily. I wasn't into training enough to pick his brain much, but, he and his wife were cool to hang out with. He loved fishing and the place he stayed at was right on Lake Ponchatrain. He was out there fishing all the time. The day he was running the finals I was flying to France for the summer. I didn't find out he tripped until two days later. As a 14 year old kid whose hero and now sort-of friend was definitely going to the Games, possibly with a chance to medal, I was crushed when I called my dad and found out he fell. I was too shy to ask him much about running. Wish I had been a few years older. It would have been cool to talk track with him a little. Really nice guy. Wish I was still in touch with him.

Wow. Just found this thread today. Unbelievable. Just like the locker room used to be. Everybody argued and it was the best time of the day. Some of the best times I ever had were the 5 years I spent running for Arkansas. Sometimes I cannot believe what we actually did - The workouts were more intense than the races. Cheers to everyone.

We recently interviewed Niall Bruton who had great success during the early 90 Arkansas juggernaut.

Interview can be found here.

http://trackboundusa.co.uk/2012/05/02/athlete-feature-25-niall-bruton/

I know there's a John McDonnell book coming out soon, so looking forward to reading more. This thread has been great.

My current highschool coach is Mike Power, Joe Falcon's son goes my highschool, he's actually a wrestler.. Reuben Reina's daughter runs for a rival school, along with David Swain's son. O'mara coaches a school down south, pretty sure his son is a decent miler. Seneca Lassiter and Godfrey both coach in the area also. Think thats everyone!

D P wrote:

I had a former high school teammate who went to Arkansas during the McDonnell Era and I remember him telling me that their long runs were 13-16 miles at 5:20 pace.

That's way too intense.

You must be from Bentonville high school.

Irish people and Ozark people have a long disgusting tradition of anal sex with male children.

Love this forum. I would like to talk about the of the mid-70s. I ran against the Hogs from 73-77. I was a 14:20 5000 man who could hang with their 5th and 6th men in XC. I know coach McDonnell would never name his favorite runner, but I think it would be O'Shaughnessy. He really made his program. He helped recruit many great runners. Never forget Steve Houk, Randy Melancon, Tom Aspel, Derek Reilly, and Stu Penn. They were the first great ones. Can you REAL Hog runners name the first Irish runner at UA?

I ran against Stu Penn in college. He was very good. The SWC limited guys like Stu and I back then because they didn't have the 10,000 or the steeplechase. I didn't know Stu and Jim Crawford were from the same place. Crawford was awesome at Harding College and running for the Army.