Beatty has said that in effect he said "Coach, I want to put myself in your hands. I will do whatever you tell me to do to get the type of results I think I can achieve" That is the only way Coach Igloi would have it with any athlete.
Beatty went on to be the first indoor 4 minute miler in Feb 1962 in 3:58.9, set the world record for two miles and set 5 American records being the first US citizen to hold the 1,500, mile, 3,000, 3 mile and 5,000 at the same time. He won the Sullivan Award in 1962, was a 1960 Olympian and won 4 National Championships.
Upon retiring he was a member of the North Carolina Legislature.
Jim Beatty also held the world two mile records both indoor and outdoor.
Dern is reportedly a solid running fanatic. A track enthusiast, I have vague recollection he had some interest (ablility?) in the 800m. Good to see he contributes like that, supporting clubs. I believe he has some respectable marathons under his belt, maybe some ultras, too.
I had left Igloi and in early 1966 was running in the weekend road races and doing fairly well (top 4-6). I did not know anyone in the LA road racing fraternity, but one Sunday a guy came over and introduced himself before the race.
"Hi, I'm Bruce Dern. I was reading some old Long Distance Logs last night and you ran some really good times back East."
It had been 4 years since I ran those times and no one had heard of me since then, so I was surprised. I had no idea who Bruce was, but he turned out to be a great guy. He told a bunch of us some great stories about the making of the movie The Wild Angels.
just as Kenny Moore, just wrote a book "Bowerman and the men of Oregon".....someone should write a book on Igloi and his runners and his interesting life.
There are too few of us left, and we are all too old.
I ran under Coach Igloi from summer 1967 through 1970, with a six month break as I was recovering from mononucleosis summer 1969 through year end. I was 16 years old and a 4:56 miler when I started running under him, a year later 4:23 mile, and 9:27 2 mile. I wrote the attached article for Track and Field Quarterly Review mid-1980s, and followed a presentation at the NCAA Meet the previous season. The article covers my interpretation of his training system, and covers my 1970 season starting with zero running prior to January 1, 1970 and ends with Igloi’s departure August 1970. The photo is from his last workout in the United States.
Thanks. Similar under Coach Joe Douglas. The addition, and a good one, was tempo runs on the road before, and sometimes additionally after an interval session.
Gotcha, it can certainly change the characteristics of a session. Good way to race "harden". I imagine. Seems to me the stuff Igloi did was train to race rather than train to train. I am assuming Douglas the same way. Am I mistaken I thought I read somewhere Igloi had a degree in exercise physiology?
I ran under Coach Igloi from summer 1967 through 1970, with a six month break as I was recovering from mononucleosis summer 1969 through year end. I was 16 years old and a 4:56 miler when I started running under him, a year later 4:23 mile, and 9:27 2 mile. I wrote the attached article for Track and Field Quarterly Review mid-1980s, and followed a presentation at the NCAA Meet the previous season. The article covers my interpretation of his training system, and covers my 1970 season starting with zero running prior to January 1, 1970 and ends with Igloi’s departure August 1970. The photo is from his last workout in the United States.
Such a great article! A user on another thread some months back was asking about this article and I forwarded a copy sent over 3 years ago. Glad people are still discussing Igloi's methods and his great disciples are sharing the information.
Gotcha, it can certainly change the characteristics of a session. Good way to race "harden". I imagine. Seems to me the stuff Igloi did was train to race rather than train to train. I am assuming Douglas the same way. Am I mistaken I thought I read somewhere Igloi had a degree in exercise physiology?
A couple of other points, one is Igloi’s use of cadence, which I discussed in the article. He would address individually what he saw as flaws in form. Also, large amounts of volume were not under a watch, especially in preparation periods. It is my understanding he did have a degree in exercise physiology and studied for a time under Gershler.
In regards to Douglas, the tempo runs were on the road, and given as “30 minutes fresh,” or at the tail end of intervals “20 minutes fresh.” At the time, I would say this was about 5:15-5:30 pace, but this was not over set distances. On these days I typically had a morning session of 6-8 miles intervals, and the afternoon sandwich of tempo-intervals-tempo was another 15-20 miles. For both Igloi and Douglas I had afternoon sessions that took up to three hours to complete. Many times the last guy to finish. Durability was my greatest asset, and they both tested my limits.
Good people, life changing for me.
This post was edited 10 minutes after it was posted.
I ran under Coach Igloi from summer 1967 through 1970, with a six month break as I was recovering from mononucleosis summer 1969 through year end. I was 16 years old and a 4:56 miler when I started running under him, a year later 4:23 mile, and 9:27 2 mile. I wrote the attached article for Track and Field Quarterly Review mid-1980s, and followed a presentation at the NCAA Meet the previous season. The article covers my interpretation of his training system, and covers my 1970 season starting with zero running prior to January 1, 1970 and ends with Igloi’s departure August 1970. The photo is from his last workout in the United States.
Such a great article! A user on another thread some months back was asking about this article and I forwarded a copy sent over 3 years ago. Glad people are still discussing Igloi's methods and his great disciples are sharing the information.
Thank you. Our connection came at a time in my life when I needed direction. “Must have big goals.”
Each year I get requests for copies. Many via this site, thus my decision to post it today. Many of the requests come from foreign coaches. In the 1990s I was invited to a coaching clinic in Mexico City, my presentation was on Igloi’s methods, from my perspective. There was a great deal of interest by the predominantly Latin American attendees.
well, i have been following this thread since it started. i met with a former coach of mine today and talked to him for a while specifically about Mihaly Igloi. my former coach ran for Igloi for a few months. when you get to the part about Mt Sac, he is competing against Bobby Seamen (sp) from UCLA who was being coached by Igloi at the time. my coach was not under Igloi's methods at the time.
notes from the interview:
Mihaly Igloi
August 6, 2007
Background: the conditions in Hungary were conducive to his style of training. Communist regime, with a lot of snow, barely any track facilities and no trails. They would take a snow plow and plow off 200m of snow on the airfield.
Philosophy: anyone can run world record pace for any given distance (800m through marathon) for a given amount of time. The idea is to teach the athlete to run that pace without stopping for the duration of the event.
“Countless runners would fall by the wayside. I was one of them. The cartilage in my knee gave out after several weeks of high intensity training.” Igloi was famous for his athletes running international caliber times within 3 months of training. Usually, 5-6 out of 10 athletes would break from his training, but the ones that didn’t break, were the ones who ran well.
Some of the athletes that he coached include: Laslo Tabori, Jim Beatty, Tracy Smith, Jerry Brady (Chaffey College, 1:50 800m and 47 400m). Brady broke down.
1952 or 1956 olympics he and other Hungarians went to Melbourne, but never went home. They came to the US. Igloi settled in Santa Clara, CA (close to San Jose) and founded the Santa Clara Youth Village. Later, he started the LA track club in the early ‘60’s.
Typical training looked followed an every other day model. Didn’t really care what happened during the days he didn’t see you. Mondays and Wednesday s were high intensity—we’d run 3+ sets of 20x100m or 200m. “how fast?” “Sprint!!”
“we worked out twice a day, same type of training each time. In spikes. “‘what do you race in? well, that’s what you practice in.’” mornings workouts were about 5:30 or 6am, and then again in the late afternoon; Mondays and wed’s. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, “what do you want me to do? Do you want me to run?” “I don’t care, whatever you feel like.”
He taught his athletes to depend on him 100%.
At the Mt. Sac relays, I raced one of his athletes, Bobby Seamen (sp?), a 4:04 miler. Bobby came up to me before the race started and said, “I have to run x pace for the first 3 laps. The final lap it doesn’t matter. I have to go through ¾ in this time. I passed him with 300 yards to go, and won the race. Igloi didn’t care about all the sweaters, watches and dishes we got when we won races like that. I needed that stuff so I ran to win.”
A couple of corrections:
1. The Santa Clara Valley Youth Village was founded in 1944 to combat juvenile deliquency. They offered some sponsorship to Igloi in 1958-59.
2. Bobby Seaman ran 4:01.4 while at UCLA. He ran 3:58 with Igloi.
Interesting that you don't recall Igloi talking about diet and nutrition considering he was fastidious about prescribing his training sessions. Mind you, although nutrition can be a contributing factor to success, training is where the biggest improvement is made.
Thanks to all the other contributors to this thread (Ghost of Igloi, Bob Schul, Ancient Runner, Bill Scobey, HRE, Tinman and everyone else who added their own little gems of information and questions).
I was there for 3 years, and Igloi never mentioned diet.
I thought one of Igloi's training principles was that of not having hard and easy days but rather having the athlete being able to train again with a similar effort day after day? How many elite runners these days spend 30 hours a week training?
That is an often incorrectly stated idea.
In the three years I was there, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday were easy days. Usually 40-60 minutes easy running. Once in a while, you would get a surprise on Sunday morning, such as 60 minutes easy followed by an all-out 880. :)
Ghost of Igloi Igloi's runners DID NOT "do regular long runs every morning."
I'd have to dig out my old training logs to see what I was doing in the mornings. I have much better memory of afternoons than I do of mornings.
I do remember running loads of 100 m repeats and laps of the big field.
Unsure of the context here, and definition of long run, which for me would be 12-20 miles. My experience on easy days was 6-8 miles in the morning. Prior to a race 4 miles. As you noted some strides 12-20 x 100 meters = alternate 2 easy, 2 good speed; or some variation, occasionally hard. My recollection anyhow. More detail in my training log, which I still have.
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