Mikeh33 wrote:
“August
10th - 20 times 220 Av 27.45
11th - 3 miles - 14.47.6
12th - 660 - 1m27s 100yds 11s times 2”
Wow that is a lot of hard running, days in a row.
Exactly, I thought I might try this over the next three months. Nope.
Mikeh33 wrote:
“August
10th - 20 times 220 Av 27.45
11th - 3 miles - 14.47.6
12th - 660 - 1m27s 100yds 11s times 2”
Wow that is a lot of hard running, days in a row.
Exactly, I thought I might try this over the next three months. Nope.
HRE wrote:
I may not understand what you're saying correctly, I'm not sure I've even heard of that "invention," but I think you're referring to the length of the two hour run listed here relative to the volume for the rest of the week(?) If so, remember that Lydiard's guys did different amounts and kinds of running at different times of the year. But the long run, 90-150 minutes was pretty much ALWAYS included. And they were all well adapted for doing it because they had the base phase where they developed the endurance for such runs. That endurance didn't just go away. So if they moved into a phase where they were maybe just running a few miles on the other days they were capable of doing long runs which were in the mix to prevent loss of aerobic conditioning too quickly.
The other thing worth mentioning here is that when you read the schedules that Arthur published you are only reading what was done in the main session. He rarely mentioned the "supplemental runs." But Barry Magee told me that when they were in the interval or racing coordination phases they kept doing those runs even though the runs don't show up in print. He told me that he, Magee, usually ran for about an hour in the morning when he was in those phases. That's what Barry did so I can't speak for Snell. But Barry used the word "they" when he told me this so while I can't say definitely if Snell was doing anything like that when he was on this schedule, it's likely that there was more mileage involved than is showing here.
And if that's not what you're referring to, well, never mind.
Thanks for the interesting info about the Lydiard training methods used then, and yes I was referring to a maxim that's repeated often here and I've seen it on runner's websites and on YouTube channels (I'm sure I was watching one of Sage Canaday's the other day and he repeated it), but I guess it applies more as a rule of thumb for beginners and certainly not Olympic 800m champions after their base phase.
I know I took the one week I quoted, out of context, but it did seem remarkable. If that was really everything for that week, that two hour run even at a very slow pace for Snell must have been well over 70% of the weekly mileage. But as you say, it likely didn't include the supplemental stuff.
I also read once that Snell used to run to and from work every day.
Anyway, I don't know if it was inspired by my comment, but somebody else started a thread asking about the '20% long run' rule.
The 20% business makes sense for a certain range of mileage. If you're doing 70-100 miles a week a long run of 14-20 miles can work well. But when I was doing 140-150 mile weeks I'd have needed to do 28-30 mile long runs just because some formula told me to? If anything, because I was doing all those miles I think I'd need long runs LESS than if I'd done fewer miles. I have a friend who did 2:13 with no runs longer than 8 miles but with 120-130 miles a week. On the other hand, when I was doing 50-60 mile weeks and running marathons, I don't think a 10-12 long run would have been enough.
Subway Surfers wrote:
Mikeh33 wrote:
“August
10th - 20 times 220 Av 27.45
11th - 3 miles - 14.47.6
12th - 660 - 1m27s 100yds 11s times 2”
Wow that is a lot of hard running, days in a row.
Exactly, I thought I might try this over the next three months. Nope.
Snell was an obvious DOPER with ANABOLIC STEROIDS to increase his recovery ability to 'almost superhuman' levels.
Anabolic steroid use was (and is) common in all runners.
I am sorry about that.
In Recovery wrote:
might be wejo wrote:
Dude ran 1:44.3
on grass. Grass.
Might be ~1:42.8 on today’s mondo carpets
Agree. Snell stated after breaking the 800m WR that he felt grass was faster than synthetic, and the track he ran on was in excellent condition.
I’d say grass to synthetic is about 0.5sec a lap, so that brings it down to 1:43.3. And I can see that Monaco is ridiculously fast for some reason. I can see it is probably about half a second faster there for 800m. That brings it down to 1:42.8.
14-flat wrote:
yyy wrote:
given the crappy shoes and tracks at the time, his
winning times are equivalent to 1:42 and 3:32, respectively.
Thanks for sharing!
He was WR holder at 800m, 880yd, 1000m, and Mile (twice). He was Olympic champ three times.
With the same "benefits" that those in the '90s enjoyed, he would have run 1:41.xx / 2:12.xx / 3:27.xx / 3:44yd / 4:48 2k.
Every middle-distance WR-holder and Olympic champion from the last 60 years would have if they had the right drug benefits that they had in the 1990s and beyond. That is why the 1000m, 1500m, Mile, 2k, 3k and 2M WRs have not been beaten in 20 years. It is not because the runners from 1997-99 just happened to be the best in the history of the world.
Agree with most of that. Not sure he could have run quite as fast over 1500m +, but certainly in the longer events he could have run significantly faster over 1500m, mile and 2000m with the ‘benefits’ of the 90’s. I’d like to think Mr Snell wouldn’t pre prepared to indulge in such benefits anyway. Certainly with his record, only Coe can compare.
Happy 80th Birthday to Peter Snell.
No bugles No drums! Just lots of hard work! thanks for sharing. Peter Snell a true legend of the sport.
Looking at his training schedule it looked very similar to another legend by the name of Seb Coe.
Good luck to the next generation.
With the 5 mile morning runs, it appears to be about 80-90 mile weeks (with the assumption that warmups and cooldowms are 1-2 miles each). I think many of the workouts are not all that challenging: a 3 mile tempo, just 1 x 600 at mile pace plus 2 x 100 strides, 6 x 200 at 800 pace, etc etc. But the workouts are virtually every day. And he doesn’t have many days of just all easy running.
As the thread is old and long, I may be repeating something I wrote years ago. But the business of following a day on the track automatically with an easy run did not catch on until well after Snell's era. Those particular sessions, as you point out, weren't really challenging but that was likely because it was close to his race. But in those years it was common to be on the track doing hard intervals 4-5 times a week. My personal record for interval sessions done is a week is 12. You might get one easy run in a week or on the day before a race but that was about it.
There's a comment here that Sell was using drugs, steroids maybe. I assume the reasoning there is that he must have been using something in order to hold up under so many track sessions. But if you needed drugs to hold up under that sort of work many of us who were running before the mid 70s, just ballparking here, would have needed them.
The mentality of training today does not allow an athlete to even fathom running so many "workouts" a week. Its hard just to get a miler to do a 13 mile long run, let alone 20+. The mentality required by Lydiard's boys to do this training is unequalled today. I do see how you could get in the rhythm of doing a short hard effort regularly though, rather than two mega sessions a week as is whats now preferred.
Should anyone attempt this training today?
Mahavishnu1500 wrote:
The mentality of training today does not allow an athlete to even fathom running so many "workouts" a week. Its hard just to get a miler to do a 13 mile long run, let alone 20+. The mentality required by Lydiard's boys to do this training is unequalled today. I do see how you could get in the rhythm of doing a short hard effort regularly though, rather than two mega sessions a week as is whats now preferred.
Should anyone attempt this training today?
Reminds me of what Herb Elliott did:
Before he left for the USA in May, he ran a 33-mile training run, believing that “the discomfort of a Mile or 1,500 metres race is more easily born if measured against the suffering…in a torturing 33 miles.” (Elliott, p.144) On the USA tour, he beat both Tabori over 1,500 in 3:45.4 and Grelle in Compton with a 3:59.2 Mile
14-flat wrote:
yyy wrote:
given the crappy shoes and tracks at the time, his
winning times are equivalent to 1:42 and 3:32, respectively.
Thanks for sharing!
He was WR holder at 800m, 880yd, 1000m, and Mile (twice). He was Olympic champ three times.
With the same "benefits" that those in the '90s enjoyed, he would have run 1:41.xx / 2:12.xx / 3:27.xx / 3:44yd / 4:48 2k.
Every middle-distance WR-holder and Olympic champion from the last 60 years would have if they had the right drug benefits that they had in the 1990s and beyond. That is why the 1000m, 1500m, Mile, 2k, 3k and 2M WRs have not been beaten in 20 years. It is not because the runners from 1997-99 just happened to be the best in the history of the world.
Rekrunner actually believes that it was simply an abundance of talent in North and East Africa, despite the populations of these regions doubling since the 90s. That and 'talent moved to the roads'.
Such a shame Snell basically had to retire in his mid-twenties, rather than carry on until Mexico. The first Olympic games on an all-weather synthetic track, and at altitude of course. Ralph Doubell won Gold in a new WR of 1:44.3. Snell himself believes he would have won his third 800m Gold in Mexico, and surely he would have ran 1:43.
HRE wrote:
As the thread is old and long, I may be repeating something I wrote years ago. But the business of following a day on the track automatically with an easy run did not catch on until well after Snell's era. Those particular sessions, as you point out, weren't really challenging but that was likely because it was close to his race. But in those years it was common to be on the track doing hard intervals 4-5 times a week. My personal record for interval sessions done is a week is 12. You might get one easy run in a week or on the day before a race but that was about it.
Nothing strange at all. If you have a training system with very distict phases, like Lydiard, where you do very little speed for several moths you have to "catch up" later during the training cycle.
I remember reading about Bob Schul´s training before his 2 mile WR. He ran 2 track workout per day for 2 weeks straight.
well,, wrote:
I remember reading about Bob Schul´s training before his 2 mile WR. He ran 2 track workout per day for 2 weeks straight.
Can you provide some details, please?
Thank you in advance.
https://twitter.com/stevemagness/status/840037140058783744?lang=en65867 wrote:
well,, wrote:
I remember reading about Bob Schul´s training before his 2 mile WR. He ran 2 track workout per day for 2 weeks straight.
Can you provide some details, please?
Thank you in advance.
Lydiard was a huge step forward from what was common before. If you look at the link to Fred Wilt's "How They Train" from 1960 or so, which is linked on this site somewhere, you'll see that most profiles had people doing reps all year round, and not necessarily moderate ones. Snell once said that how fast you can race is determined by how much running you can do at race pace or close to it and that the amount of work you can do at that effort is determined by how well you've developed your aerobic fitness. The point of the base phase was to make you fit enough to do large amounts of race pace or near running when the time came.
Mahavishnu1500 wrote:
The mentality of training today does not allow an athlete to even fathom running so many "workouts" a week. Its hard just to get a miler to do a 13 mile long run, let alone 20+. The mentality required by Lydiard's boys to do this training is unequalled today. I do see how you could get in the rhythm of doing a short hard effort regularly though, rather than two mega sessions a week as is whats now preferred.
Should anyone attempt this training today?
The answer to that depends on what you mean by "this training." You can't look at a cross section of workouts from a short time and make that kind of evaluation. Snell had years of distance and hill work behind him when he was doing the stuff shown here. If you're talking about the whole package that he did in the course of a year, well, why not? It worked really well for him.
Neither his 800/880y nor mile records were set on regular shaped tracks. The 800/880 has three bends per lap and the mile was on a 5 lap to the mile track (352 yards). It's hard to quantify the grass vs synthetic times when we can't compare the track shapes! For comparison - I ran 1:47.60 on synthetic and 1:48.02 on grass (in the same season).
Deanouk wrote:
In Recovery wrote:
Might be ~1:42.8 on today’s mondo carpets
Agree. Snell stated after breaking the 800m WR that he felt grass was faster than synthetic, and the track he ran on was in excellent condition.
I’d say grass to synthetic is about 0.5sec a lap, so that brings it down to 1:43.3. And I can see that Monaco is ridiculously fast for some reason. I can see it is probably about half a second faster there for 800m. That brings it down to 1:42.8.
well,, wrote:
If you have a training system with very distict phases, like Lydiard, where you do very little speed for several moths you have to "catch up" later during the training cycle.
Lydiard's hill phase specifically included fast downhill running and "wind sprints" on the flat. Even his buildup phase, at least in his earliest writings, included a weekly fartlek session; in addition, where his runners lived it was virtually impossible to avoid significant amounts of hill work (aka "intervals in disguise") whilst piling up the miles.
Subway Surfers wrote:
Mikeh33 wrote:
“August
10th - 20 times 220 Av 27.45
11th - 3 miles - 14.47.6
12th - 660 - 1m27s 100yds 11s times 2”
Wow that is a lot of hard running, days in a row.
Exactly, I thought I might try this over the next three months. Nope.
The 20x200m sounds like a tough session (faster than mile pace), but it would be interesting to know the recoveries.
How far could he run 4:55 per mile? 6 miles? 10 miles? This is a good effort, but I doubt it would be that hard for him.
A 660 1:27 seems odd though. I would expect a 1:55 half-miler to be able to do this. Unless the 100 yard runs were done with short recoveries, what is the purpose of this day? Why not 1320 yards at that pace, or a 660 in 1:20 or faster?
Is much known about his "jogging" pace? I heard from someone who attended a BMC training weekend that he used to tell stories on his runs and would speed up when they got interested and a lot of people would struggle to keep up!