i listened to gibby's interview on letsrun, maybe a month or two ago. it was a decent listen. the one thing i didn't really agree with was his idea that there shouldn't be EASY days. Just REGULAR days...or something to that degree. I'm sure there are many others out there with this philosophy, I just disagree. If Jakob can do easy runs at slower than 6:00 pace, college kids can certainly run at 6:30-7:00 pace and still make improvements.
The only issue here is, why is 6:00 per mile the number they have to hit? Why not run the way you feel? Some days it is , some days slower, some days faster? Why have some random number? If you hit the 6:00 on a day when you are tired, not recovered, you become more tired and take longer to recover. Recipe for disaster.
Sad thing is, he does not have enough time to get back to where he was before the injury, 2028 is only 4 years away.
You could just as easily argue that "run the way you feel" is a recipe for disaster as (1) it can detract from consistency in training (which is generally thought to reduce injuries) and (2) how you feel can be a function of your emotional state as much or more than your actual physical recovery, so on that basis, could just as easily lead one toward overtraining (and potentially, injury) or under-training -- not exactly super-scientific.
Given that Gibby has produced two NCAA Champions in one calendar year, perhaps we should give him a little credit.
Just checked his Strava, his alternative training is pretty impressive. 7 hours swimming and 7 hours biking, must be boring when you just want to run.
hours spent cycling is a 3:1 convertion to running, swimming is more like 4:1 (cant be bothered to dig through and link the studies atm)
so that equiv of 2.3hrs running + <2hrs running - this is not going to touch the sides in sustaining him while he's off if he's not able to put full force through certain muscle groups like on an elliptical or even alter-G
Graham is a great runner. I think that his ceiling is absurdly high, probably the highest of anyone in the NCAA right now. If he wants to get there, he needs a coach who will tap him on the shoulder and tell him to chill when it's time to chill. Gibby is not that guy. In fact, he looks like the opposite.
Why have Graham run a separate, harder workout from the rest of the boys on the Tuesday before the race? Why jump him up from 65mi to 100mi over just a 2 weeks, faster than any of his teammates?
Both of these things would indicate that he is being periodized to be in peak racing shape sooner than the rest of his teammates, but why? He's already qualified in the 5000m and is capable of qualifying for the 3000m off of relatively little training.
It's just greedy training. If you want to run the trials, you have to sacrifice a bit indoors. Nobody would fault Graham for losing to Nico indoors if he was able to make the team outdoors. Instead, he'll be lucky to be competitive at all in the trials (which are only 4 months away).
The only issue here is, why is 6:00 per mile the number they have to hit? Why not run the way you feel? Some days it is , some days slower, some days faster? Why have some random number? If you hit the 6:00 on a day when you are tired, not recovered, you become more tired and take longer to recover. Recipe for disaster.
Sad thing is, he does not have enough time to get back to where he was before the injury, 2028 is only 4 years away.
You could just as easily argue that "run the way you feel" is a recipe for disaster as (1) it can detract from consistency in training (which is generally thought to reduce injuries) and (2) how you feel can be a function of your emotional state as much or more than your actual physical recovery, so on that basis, could just as easily lead one toward overtraining (and potentially, injury) or under-training -- not exactly super-scientific.
Given that Gibby has produced two NCAA Champions in one calendar year, perhaps we should give him a little credit.
"Run the way you feel" is definitely a disaster for most runners, but "run 6:00 even if you had the hardest workout of your life yesterday and woke up with a cold" is also a disaster. Harvard has a very high injury and burnout rate for a reason.
Why not prescribe slower pace on days following high intensity efforts?
Simply: "Workout group from yesterday, don't hammer today. Run 6:30s--you earned it."
This one modification would probably save ~5-10 Harvard athletes/yr from injury (maybe 1-2 of whom is good).
Graham is a great runner. I think that his ceiling is absurdly high, probably the highest of anyone in the NCAA right now. If he wants to get there, he needs a coach who will tap him on the shoulder and tell him to chill when it's time to chill. Gibby is not that guy. In fact, he looks like the opposite.
Why have Graham run a separate, harder workout from the rest of the boys on the Tuesday before the race? Why jump him up from 65mi to 100mi over just a 2 weeks, faster than any of his teammates?
Both of these things would indicate that he is being periodized to be in peak racing shape sooner than the rest of his teammates, but why? He's already qualified in the 5000m and is capable of qualifying for the 3000m off of relatively little training.
It's just greedy training. If you want to run the trials, you have to sacrifice a bit indoors. Nobody would fault Graham for losing to Nico indoors if he was able to make the team outdoors. Instead, he'll be lucky to be competitive at all in the trials (which are only 4 months away).
I agree that the mileage was too high but he has plenty of time to be in peak shape for June. From my understanding this was a minor setback and will be good to go for outdoor.
Graham is a great runner. I think that his ceiling is absurdly high, probably the highest of anyone in the NCAA right now. If he wants to get there, he needs a coach who will tap him on the shoulder and tell him to chill when it's time to chill. Gibby is not that guy. In fact, he looks like the opposite.
Why have Graham run a separate, harder workout from the rest of the boys on the Tuesday before the race? Why jump him up from 65mi to 100mi over just a 2 weeks, faster than any of his teammates?
Both of these things would indicate that he is being periodized to be in peak racing shape sooner than the rest of his teammates, but why? He's already qualified in the 5000m and is capable of qualifying for the 3000m off of relatively little training.
It's just greedy training. If you want to run the trials, you have to sacrifice a bit indoors. Nobody would fault Graham for losing to Nico indoors if he was able to make the team outdoors. Instead, he'll be lucky to be competitive at all in the trials (which are only 4 months away).
I agree that the mileage was too high but he has plenty of time to be in peak shape for June. From my understanding this was a minor setback and will be good to go for outdoor.
When he was injured, he had 20 weeks until the trials. Now, he's been off of his feet for 2 full weeks and has 18 weeks remaining. He will need another couple of weeks at least to ramp up into intensity, and should probably take more time if coming off an injury.
So, he's at least 10% of training time down on his competitors and probably will be closer to 25% down. It's not insurmountable, but it's a tall task.
Cheering for him, though. I'd rather see him on the team in Paris than anyone else.
Gibby has probably ruined just as many athletes if not more than he has made really good. He just hammers you until you either break or make it out the other side. If you can hang, you’re gonna be good but I personally know a very very respectable high school athlete who ran under him for two years and it ruined him. He’s obviously had a lot of success, but this doesn’t surprise me.
I think many of the posters on this thread have a serious case of tall poppy syndrome. Would Gibby be receiving this criticism if he hadn’t been so amazingly successful in helping Graham and Maia become top tier runners, and at one of the best schools in the world? Didn’t think so. Injuries happen in the sport. Grow up.
Thats terrible. He is a great talent and I hope he gets well soon.
What bothered me about the threshold video that was posted about Harvard was this: So many were quick to praise how smart the coach was for doing threshold work right now without having ANY idea what the training was around that one video. This happened with Newbury Park and high school kids; they would watch one workout then start asking their coaches if they could do the same workout. One day is just one piece of a hopefully well thought out puzzle. We cant deduce much from these glorified one off workout videos about an entire program!
Gibby has probably ruined just as many athletes if not more than he has made really good. He just hammers you until you either break or make it out the other side. If you can hang, you’re gonna be good but I personally know a very very respectable high school athlete who ran under him for two years and it ruined him. He’s obviously had a lot of success, but this doesn’t surprise me.
There are a lot of poor takes about injuries and running, and misunderstandings of training systems based on minimal information on this thread, but that’s kind of par for the course here....but this, and the earlier comments about "churn and burn" and that Gibby doesn't care about individual athletes are, frankly, slanderous, and deserve a response in case a potential recruit comes across this thread.
I ran for Gibby, know the man well, and would gladly take a bullet for him, not because of how great of a coach he is (though he was for me), but because of who he is as a person.
I doubt there is another top tier coach in DI who is as genuinely interested in the goals and successes of his walk-ons as Gibby is, and, lest we forget, there are receipts to back that up: he was pushed out of U-Mich not because he wasn't being successful (he won conference XC the year before he left) because he wouldn't cut a bunch of his squad athletes when UM shifted to an SEC, low-roster approach. In my time running for him, he showed as much care, support, and attention to his 9:40-type walk ons as he did to his Footlocker finalists, and folks who bought in, took care of themselves made progress, often in leaps and bounds, taking average high schoolers to NCAA contributors. As a developmental coach - not just one of blue chip high school elites - Gibby is unmatched.
Further, this persistent idea that he only does high-mileage, or that he hammers athletes is nonsense. First, every one of my teammates had personalized training, and Gibby has shown he's just as successful in coaching folks who can only handle 40 mpw as 100+ mpw athletes, and all the cherry-picked data points folks are tossing out because they saw them on Strava or Youtube (like about pace on normal run days) all make sense the context of a broader training system, and are themselves personalized in practice.
Equally nonsense is the idea that he "ruins" athletes. The reality that should surprise no one who has actually run at a high level is that being successful at the DI level requires a lot of hard work, whether that shows up in mileage, intensity, or elsewhere. That shift in work often takes you to the edge, and is always, no matter what program you are in or who the coach is, going to be a change from the ease with which many people found success in high school (often on limited mileage and not very intense training). And 18-20 year old athletes being frustrated things are different, not easy anymore, and that they aren't the top of the heap once they arrive in the NCAA, is very often more about them. And them making the kind of stupid choices that 18 year olds make which negatively impact training, like drinking, failing to take care of nutrition or recovery details, etc., is absolutely about them and not a coach or training scheme. But lashing out about training or a coach with high expectations 'hammering' or 'ruining' you is a lot easier than taking personal accountability.
Not everyone is going to click with their coach (that's why there's a portal now). I had teammates for a year or two who ultimately quit because NCAA training wasn't for them. Some of them didn't get on with Gibby as they came to realize that on their own or due to performance, but even those folks he treated with care and respect. For my own part, I had my injury issues, and didn't run quite as fast as I maybe hoped when I showed up as a freshman. But in retrospect, nearly all of the things that led to those issues were down to my own stupid choices as an 18-20 year old - yet Gibby was incredibly supportive throughout, for my running, through my injuries, and extending to my academic and personal life. He genuinely and authentically cared about us, and wanted the best for us as people as much as athletes.
This is all to say that there isn't a high level coach anywhere who isn't going to have their detractors, or who will work for/connect with every athlete. We're people, and not every personality is going to connect, ultimately, And not every training system is going to work for every runner. There are different kinds of runners who need, and want, different things in training. If something doesn’t work for someone, that isn’t a reflection on the merits of that system, or the character of the coach who directs it.
So let’s keep the immature and adolescent slander based on second-hand information and wild speculation out of here. Gibby is not for everyone, but he is an incredibly respectful, thoughtful, and caring coach, and has been across multiple institutions, and for many years.
Graham's training works really really well. Lots of fast and hard miles. You get super fit.
BUT once you enter that injury cycles things get spooky. You are trying to get back to the mileage and paces you were running. Remember 18 weeks until trials need to do it quick. But this is an incredible stress on your already injured bodied. So you get injured again. More missed time. More pressure to get back to where you were. Trying to run 100 mpw at 6 pace. More stress on body. Repeat.
Seen it many times with pros. One incredible season and then rest of their career alternating between injured and lackluster performances.
Graham's training works really really well. Lots of fast and hard miles. You get super fit.
BUT once you enter that injury cycles things get spooky. You are trying to get back to the mileage and paces you were running. Remember 18 weeks until trials need to do it quick. But this is an incredible stress on your already injured bodied. So you get injured again. More missed time. More pressure to get back to where you were. Trying to run 100 mpw at 6 pace. More stress on body. Repeat.
Seen it many times with pros. One incredible season and then rest of their career alternating between injured and lackluster performances.
Graham's training works really really well. Lots of fast and hard miles. You get super fit.
BUT once you enter that injury cycles things get spooky. You are trying to get back to the mileage and paces you were running. Remember 18 weeks until trials need to do it quick. But this is an incredible stress on your already injured bodied. So you get injured again. More missed time. More pressure to get back to where you were. Trying to run 100 mpw at 6 pace. More stress on body. Repeat.
Seen it many times with pros. One incredible season and then rest of their career alternating between injured and lackluster performances.
I would love to be wrong.
You don’t even know what the injury is.
The injury cycle doesnt care.
He hasn't run since february 3rd. With 3 weeks completely off running it isn't minor that is for sure .
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