In Fred Wilt's "How They Train," both Kuts and Bolitnikov are profiled. When I'm ambitious I'll type some of that up and post it. As to Kuts' physical problems and untimely demise, I think it might have been that he was the prototype for the drugged Eastern Bloc athlete.
Nobby:
You misunderstood me a little - the statue of Arthur is at Ericcson Stadium, overlooking the track. The waterfall is where Arthur's children put his ashes.
Kim: While in NZ, I had the pleasure of watching the All Blacks defeat the Wallabies. Hard to imagine a better game than that! Kiwi culture at its finest. I asked Barry Magee if he was a rugby fan and he gave me an incredulous look and said "All New Zealanders are rugby fans!" Silly me.
It is interesting as we look in hindsight but I know that Arthur's boys were huge fans of Zatopek and idolised him (As many of us idolised them !). As for Kuts, I remember Bill B saying (in so many words!!)"He was the man !"
It was from Kut's tactics in Melbourne that Arthur decided how Halberg should run ar Cardiff and Rome.
Those results as we know are History.
Kut's came out here in 1965 with part of a Russian Team.
The guys were dissapointed as he had let his condtion go and was basically obese.
However, I never heard the guys point the finger at any of those Russian guys and say "Drugs". I know they raised an eyebrow when they thought one of the Russians was out of form and yet ran well (It may have been Bolotnikov)but they just got on with the job of training hard and trying to beat the Russians. Which they did when it counted (other than Bolotnikov in Rome !!!).
As for Rugby, you would not have got a more ardent fan than Arthur and from what I have picked up I believe he was quite a good player in his day. Only problem he was a little small, but did not lack as we say "guts" to get in and play hard.
Yes ! All Kiwi's are Rugby fans.
HRE wrote:
In Fred Wilt's "How They Train," both Kuts and Bolitnikov are profiled. When I'm ambitious I'll type some of that up and post it. As to Kuts' physical problems and untimely demise, I think it might have been that he was the prototype for the drugged Eastern Bloc athlete.
I was essentially kicked off the Track & Field News message board for merely suggesting such a thing was possible. We know, and have known for decades, that the Soviet weightlifters were using pure testosterone by 1954. But whether or not it was passed on to the track team, and to Kuts in particular, is pure conjecture. On the other hand, the idea that an athlete could do damage to his own heart from distance running training, regardless of type or intensity, runs counter to pretty much everything we accept these days.
Hotlanta:
Sorry about the misunderstanding (and posting it). It's the language thing...I don't speak Engrish.
Here's what I have on Kuts' training:
Sample A:
Mon: AM: jog and calisthenics (40 min.) / PM: 100X5; 200X3; 400X15; 10 min. running on the ball of foot
Tue: AM: Fartlek 40 min. / PM:60~90 min. tempo
Wed: AM: 45 min. jog / 150X5; 400X5; 1200X2; 400X3; 10 min. running on the ball of foot
Thur: AM: Fartlek 90 min. with 100~600 strides
Fri: AM: Jog in forest / 200X3; 100X6; 10 min. running on ball of foot
Sat: AM: Jog for recovery
Sun: AM: Jog and calisthenics (30 min.) / PM: 150X5; 1600X4; 400X6; 10 min. running on the ball of foot
Sample B:
Mon: AM: Jog/PM: Jog
Tue: AM: 100X5; 200X20~25; 100X5 / PM: 100X5; 300X15~20; 100X5
Wed: AM: 60~90 min. XC tempo / PM: 60~90 min. XC
Thur: AM: 200X5; 400X15~20; 200X5 / PM: Fartlek 70~90 min.
Fri: AM: Jog / PM: Jog
Sat: 400X3; 800X10~12; 400X3 / PM: 400X3; 1200X6~8; 400X3
Sun: AM: Fartlek 70~100 min. / PM: Fartlek 80~110 min.
HRE: Is this pretty much what you have from "How They Train"?
I've no idea whether Kuts was given anything or not, There were stories of times in his career when he was absolutely worthless in a training session but was in top form a day or two later. Like you, I have a hard time believeing that he destroyed his heart from running, even from running really hard, and the story about collapsing at 29 and never being able to run again is odd. It's certainly not evisdence of drugs, but this was all only a few years before the Press sisters disappeared once gender testing was instituted.
Nobby, I haven't had a chance to go looking for Wilt's book, but that looks about like I remember.
What I have on Kuts' training is, he, with his early coach (Nikifolov?) "studied" Zatopek's training and evolved it to (1) more fartlek, (2) more variety of interval distances, (3) less in number and faster intervals and (4) long continuous runs of upto close to 2-hour.
Also interesting to note is his Melbourne 10000m race. He ran that race "to win" at any cost. Performance enhancing substance or not, I can see Lydiard and his runners "learnt" that type of tactics (to win) and the way to prepare for it from that race which, to Kim's point, Halberg employed in Rome.
How that race went and some of the lap times that I have are: Lap 1: 61, lap 2: 68, lap 5: 65, lap 6: 72..., ran very hard between 3000 and 5000 (14:07), recovered a bit, sprinted lap 15 (66), slowed lap 16, sprinted again lap 17..., slowed way down and stepped off to the lane 2 at 7000m so the only follower, Gordon Pirie, had no choice but to take the lead... By then Pirie was done and ended up finishing 8th. I thought I had more detailed lap times (sorry guys). Perhaps someone else (HRE?) might have all the lap times??? Jtupper, you were there and saw that race. Did you take lap times? (a friendly joke!)
Okay, jsquire has already spelled out Kuts' coach's name. Again, you know how Japanese have problem with "L" and "R"!
Very interesting is this, but also I wonder what the pause and speed was on the repition was. Looks as a very hard training program and also good volume 150km. And is there any iformation on periodization of the year.
I also wonder what the PB of Vladimir Kuts is on shorter distances 400-800-1500m, Was he a speed runner? looks to have so much Power
I know when Zatopek used his intervals like 5x200m+20x400m+5x200m the speed was 30sec for 200m and 67 sec for 400m = 5k pace when he broke WR in 13.57 Pause active jog 200m I think slow. For 10000m preparation his Volume of 400m reps was up to 40x400m in 70/71.
About Kuts I do not know the intensity hope someone can explain his system. I always have wondered this because I found him such a spesial runner.
But was this before or after his big break through as a distance king? .
Maybe It was not becausase of drugs he was muscular but maybe his boxing career, offcourse I know nothing about USSR and drugs in 50s but more on DDR later, offcourse the eastblock countries worke toghther.
thank you for wery nice information.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Men's Athletics
Gold 1956 5000m
Gold 1956 10000m
Vladimir Petrovich Kuts (Russian: §£§Ý§Ñ§Õ§Ú§Þ§Ú§â §±§Ö§ä§â§à§Ó§Ú§é §¬§å§è) (February 7, 1927-August 16, 1975) was a Soviet long distance runner. He is alternatively known as Volodymyr Kuts, the Ukrainian spelling, as Kuts was born in Aleksino, which is in present-day Ukraine.
Kuts, who was an army officer during his sportive career, was first noticed internationally in 1954. At the European Championships in Berne, he defeated the favourites - Czech star Emil Z¨¢topek and Britain's Chris Chataway - in the 5000 m, en passant setting a new world record. Kuts lost the World Record months later to Chataway (who beat him narrowly), only to take it back again 10 days later.
Having lost his World Record again in 1955, Kuts was still one of the favourites for the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne. His chief opponent in the 5000 m was British runner Gordon Pirie, who had broken the world record earlier that year. However, Kuts had set a new World Record in the 10000 m shortly before the Games. In the first final, the 10000 m Kuts - as always - lead from the start, finally breaking Pirie's spirit 4 laps from the end, winning easily. The 5000 m final (5 days later) was a formality, and Kuts gained his second gold of the Games.
Kuts improved the 5000 m WR in 1957 to 13:35.0, a time which would remain unbeaten until 1965, when it was beaten by Ron Clarke. Kuts himself soon found himself unable to keep up with the top runners, and retired in 1959.
He died of a heart attack, aged only 48, in Moscow
This is getting more like "Kuts thread" but this is interesting anyways and, beside, we can keep this thread alive a while longer! So Snookie, bear with us.
I intentionally avoided putting the "speed" down for his reps because, once again, numbers can be very deceiving. But if you insist; I have his 200X5 time being 27~28; 400X15 being 63~65; 400X5 being 61~64; 1200 being about 3:12; 1600 being about 4:40~47; 400 repeats after longer reps (1200 or 1600) being more around 65~67. Recovery jog was always short: even for 1600m repeats, he took only 100m jog! For 400 reps, it was 100~200. In fact, recovery jog was almost always shorter than the fast segments (I see some people would love that!).
Numbers can blind you. I was just talking to Rod Dixon yesterday and he told me that he and John Walker would go to Europe and train on track; John would do something like 5~7X400 in 52~53 seconds. Rod would do 15X400 in 57 seconds. They both come out from the track workout with pretty much the "same physiological benefit". Numbers don't matter. John was that much faster and probably had higher threashold but what can you do? You just train with what you've got and train accordingly. They both ran pretty close in the mile. John was faster and won the gold medal but Rod was much more versatile and did great in variety of distances (1500 to marathon).
I look at all the info in literature as some point of reference but don't believe everything I read (You probably heard about famous story of Ron Clarke training 3-times-a-day. I heard him actually say that the actual fact was that he did try 3-times-a-day but didn't quite work out so he dropped the idea fairly quickly. Media, however, loved that story so they just quickly added the whole distance times 365 days a year equals his training volume). As for Zatopek, my understand is that he didn't have too much choice of where he could run but track so, in order to break boredom, he would go one direction, change the direction, one fast, one slow... This evolved into what we now know as interval training. My understanding of his "speed" was that he would start out fairly fast but, as he increased the number, he naturally slowed down quite a bit. By the time he was doing his famous 70X400m it was something like 80 seconds or thereabout. To me, that's more or less like long fartlek work. To me, the whole key to Zatopek's success was this volume. He was running more than anybody else at the time.
I see there's a Billy Mills thread going on. If people truly believe you can achieve Olympic 10000m gold medal on 25 miles a week training, all the power to them. One less person to worry about. People can hear and read what they want; but human physiology doesn't differ too much from time to time or person to person. There's certain developments we need to work on (though there are different ways to develop them) and the way to train is not to go by numbers but more with physiological reactions. Training pattern shouldn't be anything more than that; pattern...or principle or concept, you may call.
I haven't been able to find "How They Train." I must have put it someplace when you sent it back to me that's different than where I kept it before I lent it to you. So it's your fault. It'll turn up.
I want to emphasize that I am not saying that Kuts was juiced, but that I have heard other people who've brought the idea up and that I think it WOULD be a better exlanation for his later physical troubles than the one that has him running himself to destruction. It's also true that the average Russian life exectancy even today is pretty low for a non Third World country. I don't think Kuts died at an age much lower than the "average."
Sorry -- no splits, but sure appeared to me that he was in control and just playing with the others. Who knows, he may not have given a hoot about what the others were thinking; he may have just been concentrating on what he was doing, which is the way to run races I figure. I got the impression that the others in the race all were thrown into his plan, but he was the only one prepared to follow that strategy.
HRE:
I'm sorry for your sloppiness (ha ha ha!). I know EXACTLY how that feels (where's my phone bill?).
I think I told you; I have "How They Train" in Japanese. I borrowed yours because sometimes there are things "lost in translation" (or messy office). Anyways, HTT definitely contains more detailed information on Kuts. Training patterns look slightly different but not that much. It also has one week schedule leading up to competition. Other interesting comments might be:
1) did quite a bit of hill running
2) absolutely necessary to have massage after every workout and if he didn't get one, he ran (trained) like crap the following day (might explain his down performance???)
3) did 2~3 hours fartlek once in a while
HRE: if you can't find the book, I would copy my Japanese version and send it to you!
I remember Arthur talking quite a bit about "who's race is it anyways?" Kuts clearly ran HIS race at Melbourne and Pirie tried to run Kuts' race and got burnt. But then again, Pirie tried to run his race in 5000 and still got beaten by Kuts (he was 2nd?) anyways so Kuts was clearly a better runner of the era.
Running your own race, and understanding your strengths and weaknesses and capitalizing it plays such a huge part. Now THAT takes some discipline and concentration.
I like the story of Jack Nicklaus. Just when he was making the putt (I don't know, some championship match?), the wind blew his hat away. Later he was asked if that destracted him. Only then he realized he lost his hat.
Rich, my apologies as it may have been me infering the drug issue with Kuts.
Just pulled my copy of "How they Train" off the shelf. My typing skills are not that good to chuck the huge amount of stuff on Kuts out of that book to here.
Will have another read of it as I have not read that section for years.
Kim,
I think we may have drifted to Kuts in that talk. But that really wasn't what I was thinking of when I posted what I did. It was more the sudden physical demise and that explanation of it being caused by all of his hard running that made me wonder.
By the way, I really got into rugby while I was there, I also saw the first match with Oz and the South African loss. Now that I'm home, I'm finding that I miss being able to watch rugby. There's got to be some satellite system that will give us international sports. But I haven't found it.
I just received Coach's book today from him. Very interesting. He kept telling me that this was going to be the "idiot proof" book. Indeed, it has many charts that you just have to follow it and record your own progress. Have you seen Bill Bowerman's (I believe the title was) "Bowerman System", a very thin green booklet? This would be a very good text book for high school and college coaches with very easy to use charts. This book, "Speed with Endurance", reminds me of that.
In it, there is a photo from 1979 Boston marathon. There are about 10 runners all bunched up together. Two Japanese (Seko and another guy) and a Brits, Chris Stwart. But what is really amazing is; there's yourself (you look like Jeff Wells in this photo!), Dick Mahoney, Randy Thomas and Rodgers all together...WITHIN THE LEADING GROUP. You ran 2:10 (or was it 2:11 in this race?), Dick Mahoney 2:14, Randy was a 2:11 man with the world 30k record, and Rodgers won this race with 2:09:27. All four coached by the local guy! Now this is something you rarely see today. Somebody in some other thread claims that we have moved on to better training system that all those "oldies" are the coaches of the past. Go figure...
As I had written previously few times, I had met Zatopek and his wife Dana several times, talked to them and lived not far from their house. From reading and talking to him personally, I know that he had only good things to tell about his friend Vladimir Kuts. It might have been encouraged by the overall athmosphere of those times (Soviet friendship was "cool", if not desired), but he was really fond of him. On the topic of drugs, he said reluctantly that it might have been a possibility in Kuts'es case. He did not point specifically to amphetamines but described those "enhancers" as if they were them. He said that he was present and ran parts of the workout with Kuts in Melbourne before the Games and he was given special drink solutions even during the session- always prepared by his coach. Then suddenly phhhhhhhew- he was away- speeding up from 66-68s quarters to 60-62s... But Zatopek never accused Kuts from anything- he just said that it was different era with different rules and athmosphere.
Now, it is only my speculation, but amphetamines might have caused the heart enlargement and the stiffening of the contracting muscles in the heart and thus contribute to overall health deteriorientation of this great (former) Soviet (Ukrainian) runner.