Good point. Wasn't he living in San Goleto, Calif.?
Good point. Wasn't he living in San Goleto, Calif.?
davebedfordwannabe wrote:
Good point. Wasn't he living in San Goleto, Calif.?
Bohemia had manufacturing plants in Grass Valley, California -- not far from Tahoe. You do the math. Their helicopters made daily runs between Oregon and California.
Since I was fairly closely associated with the early (and even current) altitude studies I feel that I may be able to add some insight into this matter. I was fortunate to get several elite athletes to act as subjects in some of my altitude research, including Ryun, McCubbins, Mason, Heinonen, Moore, Bell, VonRuden, Nightingale, Patrick, Bacheler, Lindgren, Schul, Young, and 14 others of similar ability. Actually the times we spent together is worth a whole lot more than a paragraph or two and I hope to write it all up some day so runners and others, who may be interested can see how things were. For instance, Jim Ryun (a well-known and successful runner) was not even given expenses to act as a subject for me at altitude. In fact he worked for $1.50 an hour in a local grocery store to meet living expenses while there. Conrad (Nightingale) cleaned cars at a local car dealer. We would race up the sand dunes (Wade Bell always took great pleasure in beating me in these races) and up to 11,000 feet (Oscar Moore beat us all here) and took float trips down the river while fishing (once all getting dumped in the river when we tried to go under a low tree branch). We ate college dorm food and slept in college dorms and did tests on the track and on the treadmill, and had a lot of fun; and that had a lot to do with these guys’ success – if you are training hard and having fun and with people you like, you will do well (could be at altitude, could be at the beach). I was really honored to work with Balke, Faulkner, Nagle, Buskirk, Oldridge, Foster, and others during all these great years. I once got to test Ron Clarke on the UCLA track, and Tom Von Ruden, Ryun, McCubbins, Mason, Lindgren and others have remained good friends of mine over the years. I plan to get them all back together again (I got all 26 of the 1968 subjects back in 1993 for a 25-year follow-up study and promise to publish those results as soon as I get them again this time as 60-year olds). Ryun, Young, Nightingale and Mills spent time in Flagstaff, and I sent Von Ruden to Leadville by himself to get away from the crowd in Tahoe. What many do not understand about altitude – when planning to race at altitude, as was the case in 1967 and 1968 -- you must learn to race at altitude. There is a physiological acclimatization that takes place over time, but also, what I like to call a “competitive acclimatization” that will help performance in altitude races. We did not have enough of that for Mexico City. Balke asked the Olympic Committee for funds to do altitude research as early as 1965, but was turned down – all our research was self funded, until 1968 when I got expenses to be in Tahoe. To hope to compete with altitude natives ( whose biggest advantage in my mind is competitive acclimatization) we needed races at altitude, but that idea was never accepted. So I had my subjects run some time trials, but our 10k guys, for example, had run 1 altitude 10k prior to Mexico City – that being the trials at Tahoe – so they had little knowledge as to how different tactics would affect them in the Olympics. George Young ran an outstanding steeple in Mexico City, Bacheler made the 5k final (but got sick on the food and couldn’t start in the final) and all three of our 1500 guys made the final – not a bad showing at all. Wade Bell also got very sick prior to the first round of the 800 and didn’t advance and I think to this day that he could have won the 8, an event Tom Farrell got a Bronze medal in. Sorry if I wandered a bit, but I hope this has added some insight into what was going on prior to ’68. By the way I have also done some altitude research with swimmers and with a well-controlled group to make some comparisons. The VO2max of the altitude group improved 5.6% after 4 weeks at altitude, and the sea-level control group improved VO2max 6.0% during that same time. Neither group had any blood changes, but the altitude group swam 11 personal bests back at sea level compared with 3 by the SL group. I think altitude is a great place to train, but for many reasons other than some physiological changes that may take place in the body. Come visit some time. JD
Mr Daniels, with all due respect, paragraphs please. My eyes hurt.
Mr. Daniels. Thanks for weighing in here. It was fascinating to read all these remembrances from an ultimate insider.
So if I may ask, what is your assessment of Steve Stageberg's natural ability. Didn't you train him in 1970 and 1971? (I always thought he was far more talented than his accomplishments would indicate, but then again I'm just an insider wannabe.)
Also, Mr. Daniels, what is your opinion of Ryun's early decline? One could argue that he was over the hill after the Mexico City Olympics, when he was still just 21 years old.
At the risk of making a fool of myself, here's my theory. First of all, he was already getting burned out by the end of the 1967 season. I remember reading in Cordner Nelson's biography of Ryun that he wanted to take a break from running. Part of that might have been due to Bob Timmons, who didn't strike me as someone who understood the value of easy days. So maybe Ryun's blood was getting acidic and causing him to become stale physically and psychologically at the end of 1967.
But since the Olympics were coming around, he was forced to keep his nose to the grindstone and got mononucleosis, which as someone else has pointed out, can stay with you. So maybe Ryun's abilitiy to recover from hard work was compromised, which might explain his erratic performances even after taking a year off from running in 1970.
A lot of great endurance athletes have come back stronger than ever after a year off. I think Rod Dixon did that before Munich. And maybe Lance Armstrong's forced rest due to cancer actually did him some good as a cyclist.
Again, this is just my uninformed opinion. But I do think that a lot of Ryun's career setbacks stem from his coaching. His coach was a throwback to the old school that believed in no pain, no gain. The guy was probably as different from you as night and day.
Squirekickedoffthreadsallover wrote:
blah, blah, blah
You do not refute a single thing I said. I never claimed altitude was not a factor in any of the '68 distance races, I merely said it was not the ONLY factor. You're very good a setting up a straw man and knocking him down.
Nor do I have a bias against white runners; I'm aware of the accomplishments the black runners in '68 had both before and after the OG. All but Amos Biwott were well known and would have been considered threats to win at sea level. It's not bigotry I'm railing against when people throw out the results of the '68 games, but ignorance of the
sport's history.
The only disagreement we have is this: Was the '66-'67 version of Ryun capable of running significantly faster than the '68 OG Ryun? Personally, I don't think so.
Also, get your facts straight. I was never kicked off the T&FN boards, but when GH gave me a dressing down for daring to suggest that a Soviet runner might have been using PEDs (at a time it was well known they were available), I decided he was not living in reality and had no further use for the man.
I at least have the balls to use my real name. I'm 99% sure I know who you are, and if I'm right, now I know you've gone completely off your rocker. I hope your dogs like you, because no one else does.
Thanks for posting that - fun to read, informative, and as close to People Magazine as we ever get on this site.
Reading Nightmare -- sorry, I just rambled and didn't re-read.
DBwannabe-- I did not coach Steve Stageberg, a very talented guy (as were many of those subjects). Interesting because Steve was an Oregon runner who left Oregon to go to college in the east.
Ryun took that year off after Mexico to finish his degree and did not run. In the article I wrote on him in 1974 it is well documented how far down he went physiologically (partly as a function of increased weight -- over 20 pounds). However, the periodic tests we did also showed the fitness that he regained and he was ready in 1972, in my estimation of things, to do very well in the Olympics and would have had a good chance of winning.
As far as the coaching he received, that is one of those things that will never be answered. People might say he could have been better under a different system, but I can also say it very well could be that the system he was subjected to was exactly the right thing for him.
There are so many reasons why an athlete responds as he or she does, and we can go on for ever trying to say this runner would have done better with another coach, and not be the least bit accurate in our assessment of the situation. You can not separate the physical from the mental, and people's lives change from year to year. I will say that Jim Ryun was as good as there ever has been in the sport -- just as can be said for Ron Clarke, and it is sad that not winning a gold medal seems to be such a big thing in the minds of some people
Thanks for the reply, Mr. Daniels. About Stageberg, there was a short article on him in an issue of Runner's World in the summer of 1971 (when RW was still serious about serious runners). Stageberg was quoted as having worked with you or your laboratory in some capacity (although if memory serves he didn't use the word "coached"). He also struck me as a bit of a joker, since he said that he drank a lot of Jack Daniels. It was in that article that I first heard of you, and it was a name that was easy to remember. And since then, I've read a lot about you. It was from you that I first learned about raising one's anaerobic threshhold through "tempo" running. I tried it, and it really worked!
In any case, I won't be foolish enough to try to argue with you about Stageberg. As for Ryun, I really do appreciate your post. But knowing a little about you and your training expertise, I can't get over the sense that you're giving us a somewhat political answer regarding Bob Timmons's coaching of Ryun.
In fact, if one were to read your reply closely, one might assume that there really are no principles when it comes to training, that every runner is unique in how they respond to training, and that Ryun might in fact have been really fortunate to have worked with Timmons, a coach who apparently didn't believe in rest days and who obviously didn't pay all that much to training cycles, since he had Ryun doing hard intervals throughout the year.
jsquire wrote:
Also, get your facts straight. I was never kicked off the T&FN boards, but when GH gave me a dressing down for daring to suggest that a Soviet runner might have been using PEDs (at a time it was well known they were available), I decided he was not living in reality and had no further use for the man.
I at least have the balls to use my real name. I'm 99% sure I know who you are, and if I'm right, now I know you've gone completely off your rocker. I hope your dogs like you, because no one else does.
I'm no fan of 'bedfordwannabe' but you are just as anonymous as he is. 'jsquire' mean nothing to nobody here. Pray tell, who are you 99 percent sure that 'bedfordwannabe' is? I think you're as looney as 'bedfordwannabe'.
Mr. Daniels, I also forgot to ask you about Ryun's erratic performances in 1972. He did run 3:52.8 that year, but he was just as likely to run 4:08 and finish last. It was truly bizarre the way he was performing up and down for two years. (The same thing was happening in 1971.) I saw him interviewed after some of these races, and he didn't attribute his poor performance to allergies. As I recall, he said something about the stress of moving from Kansas to California, which might explain one week's performance, but not two years.
About Ryun's comeback from his year off in 1970, his first race was an indoor mile. Sports Illustrated devoted an entire article to it. I think Ryun ran 4:01 with little competition.
Also, the meet was a comeback of sorts for George Young, who battled Australian steeplechaser Kerry O'Brien in the two mile. I forget who won the two mile (probably O'Brien), but I remember the winning time was 8:33.
Another Australian, Kerry Pierce, was touring indoors with O'Brien in 1971. The previous year, it looked like Pierce was destined for greatness, as he had run amazingly well in his senior year at UTEP. But apparently in 1971 he was just showing up to collect the appearance money, as he ran the two mile in about 9:05.
Realize that Timmy wasa swim coach and pretty much used swim-type training for the runners when he bagan working with them. An example of a couple days on the track for Ryun (I have the actual typed out sessions that Timmons gave me). On a Wednesday he did 50X400 and averaged about 69+ (starting one every 3 minutes with breaks after sets of 20, 10, 10, 10) 50X3min is 2-1/2 hours, so pretty long with the breaks (and weight work) thrown in . However, how fast is 69 for a guy who can race 59 pace for a mile. The the next day was 3 sets of 6X880yd, with an average time of 2:45 or so. Now that is 5:30 per mile pace andslower than threshold pace, so pretty easy . Mainly just doing a lot of work, like swimmers do. Other swessions were faster (one involved 10X400 in about 57 average), but not all was hard intervals -- let's say prolonged interval sessions.
Steve Stageberg and I did talk about his training (based on his tests, so that is probably the reference there. I need to write up some of the training some of these guys did; some much simpler and easier than you might expect (with Doug Padilla being a great example of a talent who did not work too hard but sure could race).
Blaming Timmons for Ryun's lack of improvement after age 21 is a real double edge sword. Ryun may never have achieved anything as a runner had he not crossed Timmie's path. Remember Timmons was a master motivator suggesting to Jim when he was only a sophomore in high school that he could be the first prep under 4 minutes.
Timmons personally told me that in hindsight he probably worked Ryun too hard. But the biggest problem was the schism that developed in their relationship leading up to Mexico City. Because of an injury (which Timmons didn't buy into) and the mono that followed their coach/athlete relationship became very strained. Timmons believes that as much as anything hurt Jim at Mexico City because it created doubt in Ryun's mind about his training regiment.
Finally to say that Ryun wasn't capable of winning in Munich just shows how ignorant some of the posters on here can be. Jim ran the third fastest mile in history in the weeks leading up to Munich. He was also back training with Timmons, the differences they had after Mexico City patched up. I'm not saying that Ryun would have beaten Keino but if Jim hadn't been tripped and gotten into the final it would have been a great race.
davebedfordwannabe wrote:
Mr. Daniels, I also forgot to ask you about Ryun's erratic performances in 1972. He did run 3:52.8 that year, but he was just as likely to run 4:08 and finish last. It was truly bizarre the way he was performing up and down for two years. (The same thing was happening in 1971.) I saw him interviewed after some of these races, and he didn't attribute his poor performance to allergies. As I recall, he said something about the stress of moving from Kansas to California, which might explain one week's performance, but not two years.
wannabe, altho folks here talk about what Ryun could have done in 1972 OLympic 1500 final; and others mention Marty Liquori....why does no one mention the brilliant but erratic Italian Francesco Arese (1971 European champ)? Wouldn't he have been in the mix?
So you think that Ryun had gotten over his up and down syndrome by the time the Olympics had rolled around? It seems that he was still running erratically even after the Olympic Trials. His races after the Olympics were also disappointing. But he certainly showed that he was capable of performing as well as anyone on a given day. Pekka Vasala won pretty easily over Keino, but that might have had more to do with the fact that Keino pushed the pace in the last lap and Vasala sat on his shoulder. That's something that Ryun could have done as well. But as I recall at the time, Vasala was running 800 meters in 1:44. Ryun failed to qualify for the American team in the 800 meters.
I admit that I'm just an outsider here who was merely a huge fan of Ryun. I read Cordner Nelson's biography of Ryun at the neighborhood library in 1969 or so. And it was amazing the amount of training Ryun was doing in high school. He spent a summer on Timmons's farm performing chores all day and then running hard intervals. I'm sure the training became more sophisticated after the early high school years, but I still wonder what Ryun might have done under Jack Daniels or Arthur Lydiard rather than Bob Timmons.
It's interesting that when Ryun started complaining of injuries after the 1967 season, Timmons basically told him to shake it off. Could there be a connection between that kind of suck-it-up approach and Ryun's later erratic performances? As Jack Daniels would probably say, no one knows for sure.
To this day, I've never seen anyone with any coaching expertise or knowledge of Ryun's history try to explain his erratic performances of 1971 and 1972. Timmons was quoted as saying that Ryun's up and down performances had him "crawling up the walls."
I would imagine that a lot of high school runners and coaches tried to emulate Timmons even though Lydiard's more scientifically sound approach was starting to get noticed. My impression is that Timmons pushed Ryun to his amazing high school achievements at the expense of an even greater success later in his career.
Rodent, I think you know as well as I do that Arese was eliminated in the semifinals.
davebedfordwannabe wrote:
Rodent, I think you know as well as I do that Arese was eliminated in the semifinals.
wannabe, are you suggesting that I am testing you track trivia knowledge? I know better than that. The Cordner Nelson bio on Ryun...was that the book that had hundreds of fine photos by Rich Something (forget surname)? I believe that photog followed Ryun around for years. Originally worked for the paper in Wichita, KS. Is this correct?
davebedfordwannabe wrote:
To this day, I've never seen anyone with any coaching expertise or knowledge of Ryun's history try to explain his erratic performances of 1971 and 1972. Timmons was quoted as saying that Ryun's up and down performances had him "crawling up the walls."
I once talked with Arthur Lydiard about Ryun's later career. He said, and this won't surprise you, that Ryun had overdone the anaerobic work and was suffering from depleted aerobic fitness.