Mihaly Igloi

I did a ten miler with Dern, DeCastella, Bjorklund, Kigen, etc. in Boulder. He never said a word.

Great coach. Poor human being. No one who knew him well will dispute that.

Damn fine article, Ghost of Igloi.

The term "shakedown" was not in use when I was there, but things change.

The Igloi terminology is unique, comparatively speaking. It is the only formal running terminology I ever learned. I often see the term "strides" used by non-Igloi people and I have NO idea what it means. :)

I always found "speed tempo" to feel unnatural, but Bobby Seaman was a natural speed tempo runner. When I left Igloi I dropped speed tempo totally. As I had pretty good natural speed, e.g., 10.3 100 yds, it did not seem to matter.

Another thing I dropped was 20x440. I ran that so many times, starting in HS, but especially with Igloi, that regardless of how it was structured, I hated it. I never ran another 440 in training. As I was looking at longer distances, before my health went South, I included repeats of up to 2000m and 3000m.

Did you know Igloi personally?

If so, when and for how long?

To those in the know how accurate is this part of the article?:

Fresh was run at 60% of Maximum heart rate

Good was run at 70% of Maximum heart rate

Hard was run at 80% of maximum heart rate

Very Had was run at 90% of maximum heart rate

John,

Pay no attention to the mentally disturbed troll. He habitually harasses my posts. Down votes, etc.

By the way, I have called Coach Igloi’s son Tamas a couple of times. Sent him articles when is father is a topic of conversation.

In regards to 100 strides he did something unusual before a couple big races. Had us do a hyperventilating breathing, or heavy breathing.

Igy

Pretty accurate from my experience.

Were you guys keeping track of heart rate? It seems like it would be all over the place in that style of training compared to longer and steadier stuff.

No. From an era of a windup stop watch. A good estimate from an experienced athlete and coach.

I ran under Igloi, Douglas, and Tabori, in that order. Tabori used distance about 1500m thru 2500m in training. He would call them 4 loppers, 5 or 6 lappers. On the inside of the track, short to long. I think it was very effective 3000-5000m training. These were run hard, near race pace efforts.

In January 1970 I was starting from scratch after a six month break with mono. That month once a day, jogging volume with some faster stuff most days. Nothing timed until 1/31 with 440 in 57.6. February started doubles Monday-Saturday, once Sunday. My log states on Tuesday April 28 “workout took close to four hours, ran with Long, Coach says 9:00 this coming summer.” “Long” was Mike Long, ran with Pre on Oregon’s 1973 NCAA Cross Country Championship team. We were frequent training partners that season.

Ghost,

In your article how long was each season? Early v late pre season? The same with early and late mid season and early and late peak season ? Weeks , months?

48,

I had no cross country season 1969-1970. So a little odd for traditional Igloi year. I did run with him the previous two years. In the 1970 track season my log shows me doing once a day training for January, 6-8 miles a day, working up to as much as 12 miles by the end of the month. Low to moderate intensity. My first race was March 28th, so prep season about three months, moving to specific training. From my log, just three timed sessions, a 440 or an 880 for 2 1/2 months, then two weeks prior to first race four timed sessions with a little more volume. Early and late mid season extended from late March until late May, so again another about 2 1/2 months. Early and late peak season from about early June to mid July, so about 6 weeks.

Igy

“Reid - Sorry to sidetrack this thread but, could you please start a thread and detail how Igloi athletes trained for longer distances? While there is a lot about his middle-distance athletes, there isn't much about SMTC athletes like you that raced longer distances.”

Bumped from 19 years ago, quite a bit of information here, including my article “Mihaly Igloi Revisited.”

Igy

You couldn't be more off on that statement! I was coached by him through my father who coached with him in the 60s before he went off to Greece. He wrote workouts for me during my high school days and I got to meet him when he came back to visit his daughter in SoCal and gave up his time to work with me coming out of an injury that totally limited my running!

He as you said, was a great coach, but he was an even greater person! He was very inspirational, personal, and truly cared about his athletes. For me, he gave up time with his own family to help me get over an injury to where I could not even run to running faster than I ever have in a matter of weeks, while this was his last time visiting his daughter in the US.

Ghost of Igloi,

I've recently wrote a review article about Mihály Iglói and his training methods.

Now that is a good review! Thank you!