Hey Wetcoast: Super shoes and bicarb aside, how come Snell's conversion from 800m to 1500m/mile was so crappy? You'd think with all those 22 mile hilly runs it would be better, like 3:48 mile better.
No one was going to run a mile in 3:48 in the 60s. The record that Snell broke was 3:54.5. He'd have had to improve the record by almost six seconds. You have to back to 1861 when the record went from 4:55 to 4:49 to see that sort of improvement. The biggest improvement since came when Elliott took 3.7 seconds from Ibbotson's time to that 3:54.5. Snell's second record could have been much faster than 3:54.1 but his pacing was not at all good. On top of that Snell was probably more suited to the 800/880. He struggled with distance, that was a big reason Lydiard had him doing those long runs, so it's not surprising if his 800 record is the qualitatively better one.
If Snell's training was so optimal back in the 1960s that everyone should be copying it today (with respect to doing 22 mile long runs as a miler), why wasn't he absolutely obliterating the mile world record down to below 3:50? It's pretty goofy to point to his training as ideal for a 1500+ runner considering the guys we're comparing to in the present day are much faster.
NONE of the top 1500 runners do this, including Jakob.
If you look at Josh Kerr’s training, he spent his teenage years developing cardiac efficiency running decent mileage and decent long runs. He now runs a little less but still put in a weekly 15 miler.
he even told the interviewer than his competitors are doing 100 mile weeks, he is now not doing that, but he strengthened his aerobic capacity as a teen and continuous some stimulus in this realm. He says he regrets the volume he did, but that played a major part of his general development:
I am not American, and I know little about running history, but I know that jim spivey posted on here a long time ago and he said something along the lines of a long run for him was 45 minutes. He ran the 5k very well.
No one was going to run a mile in 3:48 in the 60s. The record that Snell broke was 3:54.5. He'd have had to improve the record by almost six seconds. You have to back to 1861 when the record went from 4:55 to 4:49 to see that sort of improvement. The biggest improvement since came when Elliott took 3.7 seconds from Ibbotson's time to that 3:54.5. Snell's second record could have been much faster than 3:54.1 but his pacing was not at all good. On top of that Snell was probably more suited to the 800/880. He struggled with distance, that was a big reason Lydiard had him doing those long runs, so it's not surprising if his 800 record is the qualitatively better one.
If Snell's training was so optimal back in the 1960s that everyone should be copying it today (with respect to doing 22 mile long runs as a miler), why wasn't he absolutely obliterating the mile world record down to below 3:50? It's pretty goofy to point to his training as ideal for a 1500+ runner considering the guys we're comparing to in the present day are much faster.
I specifically clicked on this thread to see how long it would take for someone to start the "but Snell ran 20M long runs!" talk.
If ever there were a case of causation vs correlation, it's that.
No one was going to run a mile in 3:48 in the 60s. The record that Snell broke was 3:54.5. He'd have had to improve the record by almost six seconds. You have to back to 1861 when the record went from 4:55 to 4:49 to see that sort of improvement. The biggest improvement since came when Elliott took 3.7 seconds from Ibbotson's time to that 3:54.5. Snell's second record could have been much faster than 3:54.1 but his pacing was not at all good. On top of that Snell was probably more suited to the 800/880. He struggled with distance, that was a big reason Lydiard had him doing those long runs, so it's not surprising if his 800 record is the qualitatively better one.
If Snell's training was so optimal back in the 1960s that everyone should be copying it today (with respect to doing 22 mile long runs as a miler), why wasn't he absolutely obliterating the mile world record down to below 3:50? It's pretty goofy to point to his training as ideal for a 1500+ runner considering the guys we're comparing to in the present day are much faster.
These kind of arguments are never ending. Snell was primarily an 800m runner who moved up to 1500m/Mile later on in his career (in Snell's era athletes generally retired by their mid-20s as it was an amateur sport) and he was fairly dominant in his secondary event, breaking the mile world record 2x (how many runners in history have done this?) and winning the Tokyo Olympics 1500m in probably the most dominant Olympic 1500m win of all time.
If you look at the race, it is clear that he was capeable of running much faster than his winning time in Tokyo (especially if you consider all the rounds of 800m races and 1500m races he covered before that final - note also that his winning time in that final was faster than Coe's winning time in Moscow 1980 on a rubberized track) but he more or less retired after these games and 1965 was pretty much a farewell tour season for him.
Would Snell have ran faster over 1500m/mile had he continued to train and race seriously after 1960? Who knows, but I think it is foolish to think that his training is worthless today especially if you look at the shoes/tracks that were around in the 1960s plus the competition structure back then did not really have big races with multiple rabbits set up for all the best runners in the world to go after fast times/world records.
I used to know a guy called Jack Maheurin, probably spelled incorrectly, who was a low 2:20s marathoner and was getting a Ph.D in exercise physiology. He said that in his research he found that there was a damaging enzyme released into your muscles when a run went longer than an hour. So he never went longer than that in training. His weekend "long run" was three ten mile runs in about 58-59 minutes. But I've never seen any other reference to that enzyme.
several studies suggest cortisol levels rise sharply after an hour. granted I don’t think that is technically an enzyme. There are also some studies that suggest there might benefits in application and aerobic enzymes by going longer.
But pretty much all research is being done on poorly trained people. We aren’t getting a group of people running 10 hours/week and comparing the results of doing 90mins/day versus 2x45 after 25 weeks. Or if you are running 14miles/day if you don’t get a cortisol spike until 90mins…
For marathon running there is probably some specific benefit of doing 2 hour runs. For a 5k runner, it isn’t remotely clear if 2 hours is better than 2x1 hour.
And frankly I think the general idea of sharp cut offs to be pretty stupid. 59/59/59 isn’t going to be different than 61/55/61.
I remember reading in the early 80's that Seko would do 60 mile weekends. Four 15 mile runs on Saturday and Sunday. I was running in college back then and of course I had to try it.
Barry Magee wrote to me that at one point in his training he was feeling flat and couldn't seem to come out of it. Lydiard had him run the 22 mile Waitakere route three days in a row. Magee said that he popped into top form shortly after.
To begin with, we’d need to know who the hell we’re talking about, because muscle fibers aren’t just cocktail trivia, they’re the damn engine. A miler skewed heavy in Type IIa fibers can still stretch those into endurance gear if he’s logging the long aerobic stuff, while a guy built on Type I slow-twitch is practically begging for it. The science isn’t cute, it’s blunt: steady, sub-threshold running ramps up PGC-1a the molecular switch that builds more mitochondria, and with more mitochondria you’ve got more power plants in every cell. That means better oxidative metabolism, less lactate chokehold at the end of a race, and legs that don’t quit after three hard intervals. Long runs also stack capillary density—more blood highways feeding oxygen and clearing waste. And yes, connective tissue hardens up, tendons stop screaming, the whole machine gets harder to break. The 5k is already 80% aerobic, so it’s obvious, but even the 1500m is still 60% aerobic by most lab numbers leans on that base. The only people who get burned are the ones who turn the long run into a goddamn death march and blow their recovery. Kept under control, it’s not folklore, it’s physiology and it’s why the best in the world still do it.
No one was going to run a mile in 3:48 in the 60s. The record that Snell broke was 3:54.5. He'd have had to improve the record by almost six seconds. You have to back to 1861 when the record went from 4:55 to 4:49 to see that sort of improvement. The biggest improvement since came when Elliott took 3.7 seconds from Ibbotson's time to that 3:54.5. Snell's second record could have been much faster than 3:54.1 but his pacing was not at all good. On top of that Snell was probably more suited to the 800/880. He struggled with distance, that was a big reason Lydiard had him doing those long runs, so it's not surprising if his 800 record is the qualitatively better one.
If Snell's training was so optimal back in the 1960s that everyone should be copying it today (with respect to doing 22 mile long runs as a miler), why wasn't he absolutely obliterating the mile world record down to below 3:50? It's pretty goofy to point to his training as ideal for a 1500+ runner considering the guys we're comparing to in the present day are much faster.
Snell's training was part of what made him the best in the world for his time. How much more optimal can you get? Its silly to ask why he didn't run under 3:50. No one was doing that in the 60s anymore than someone in the 30s was running under 4:00. And we don't really know what would happen if guys today did what he did.
The long run is important if you need to run for a long, sustained effort like a marathon or half marathon. Otherwise, just get in good, consistent mileage and have a longer run of maybe 10-12 miles.
I saw that Hobbs Kessler doesn’t do a long run . Long runs are pretty taxing on the body . Is it important for someone doing mile - 5k?
They are important I think, but some put too much emphasis on it. I don't think someone needs to do a 15+ LR if their regular run is 8. 11 or 12 will do the trick. If you want something harder from it just change the paces, add hills, etc. The only ones going for the 15, 16 mile LRs are high school kids or high school coaches that like to brag about how many miles they're doing. Don't do too much when the right amount will do the trick.
I remember reading in the early 80's that Seko would do 60 mile weekends. Four 15 mile runs on Saturday and Sunday. I was running in college back then and of course I had to try it.
Barry Magee wrote to me that at one point in his training he was feeling flat and couldn't seem to come out of it. Lydiard had him run the 22 mile Waitakere route three days in a row. Magee said that he popped into top form shortly after.
A 22 mile long run 3 days in a row? I would collapse.
I'm sorry, I meant to write that Lydiard prescribed the runs but I wrote "Snell" instead. My mistake.
My point is that modern training is more important than the long run for success in middle distance. By modern training, I mostly mean long repeats (1000m and longer) with relatively short rests. I would also include double threshold training even though sometimes the repeats are as short as 400m.
As far as I know, there was no such thing as "aerobic interval training" in Lydiard's vocabulary. But looking at energy systems used or lactate levels, properly done double threshold training is clearly predominantly aerobic.
I do love that story from a pain in the weltschmerz! Many roads to Rome, or Tokyo, or Brisbane, etc.
I'm sorry, I meant to write that Lydiard prescribed the runs but I wrote "Snell" instead. My mistake.
My point is that modern training is more important than the long run for success in middle distance. By modern training, I mostly mean long repeats (1000m and longer) with relatively short rests. I would also include double threshold training even though sometimes the repeats are as short as 400m.
As far as I know, there was no such thing as "aerobic interval training" in Lydiard's vocabulary. But looking at energy systems used or lactate levels, properly done double threshold training is clearly predominantly aerobic.
I do love that story from a pain in the weltschmerz! Many roads to Rome, or Tokyo, or Brisbane, etc.
Lydiard's guys did do long repeats with short rests but more likely miles or 1320s or 880s than 1,000 meters. The 1,000 reps seem to have caught on big time in the not terribly recent past but I can't recall anyone much doing them in the 70s or before at least in the English speaking world. There absolutely was aerobic interval training in Arthur's vocabulary. It was unsrtuctured and he called it fartlek. And there were sessions like that in the early part of the interval phase. Snell did sessions like 20 x 440 in 70 or so seconds with a 440 recovery.
I once asked Snell about the value of the sort of precise and intricate kinds of training that seem to come with modern training. He said the value of such sessions was that they allow coaches to justify their own existence. I passed that line along to Ron Clarke who absolutely loved it. I may be showing my age here but from maybe 1967 on I read everything I could get my hands on about the sport and especially about training. I just don't see anything modern that's much different from what people did in the 60s and 70s. It's measured and prescribed and described more precisely and there's a much larger vocabulary around it. The obvious counter argument is that times today are much faster than they were in the 60s and 70s but the sport is so different now that it's impossible to attribute those times to any specific thing.
But to the business of the long run as I said earlier, Elliott and Snell did them and subsequently so did everyone else. They didn't all do 22 miles, at least not regularly, but they did long runs. I believe that Walker's typical long run was 15 miles and of course he got under that 3:50 mark you're keen on. Would Snell have gotten closer to 3:50 if his long run was 15 miles or would he have been slower than he was? Would Walker have been faster if he'd regularly done 20 mile runs? I do completely agree with people here who have said overall mileage is much more important than a long run is and so to the question in the thread title I'd say it's important but I don't know what that important means in real life.
I saw that Hobbs Kessler doesn’t do a long run . Long runs are pretty taxing on the body . Is it important for someone doing mile - 5k?
Everything regarding training is very particular to the distance a person is training for and the individual themselves. My stance is around the idea that a long run almost always has good value for individuals training for distances >5k, however long runs should not be egregiously long for example a runner running ~40-50 mpw should not be running >12 miles for their long run. Moreover, runners should prioritize consistent training, and I have noticed that many runners, especially collegiate runners, tend to overdo their long runs in terms of both distance and pace. So, like all things, when used effectively long runs are a great way to increase aerobic capacity and improve the musculoskeletal systems ability to handle the forces running puts on the body. But just don’t overdo it, and remember to do all of the other necessary work e.g. tempos, intervals both long and short, core/stretching, etc. Also take an off day every now and then you crazy kids.
I'm sorry, I meant to write that Lydiard prescribed the runs but I wrote "Snell" instead. My mistake.
My point is that modern training is more important than the long run for success in middle distance. By modern training, I mostly mean long repeats (1000m and longer) with relatively short rests. I would also include double threshold training even though sometimes the repeats are as short as 400m.
As far as I know, there was no such thing as "aerobic interval training" in Lydiard's vocabulary. But looking at energy systems used or lactate levels, properly done double threshold training is clearly predominantly aerobic.
I do love that story from a pain in the weltschmerz! Many roads to Rome, or Tokyo, or Brisbane, etc.
Lydiard's guys did do long repeats with short rests but more likely miles or 1320s or 880s than 1,000 meters. The 1,000 reps seem to have caught on big time in the not terribly recent past but I can't recall anyone much doing them in the 70s or before at least in the English speaking world. There absolutely was aerobic interval training in Arthur's vocabulary. It was unsrtuctured and he called it fartlek. And there were sessions like that in the early part of the interval phase. Snell did sessions like 20 x 440 in 70 or so seconds with a 440 recovery.
I once asked Snell about the value of the sort of precise and intricate kinds of training that seem to come with modern training. He said the value of such sessions was that they allow coaches to justify their own existence. I passed that line along to Ron Clarke who absolutely loved it. I may be showing my age here but from maybe 1967 on I read everything I could get my hands on about the sport and especially about training. I just don't see anything modern that's much different from what people did in the 60s and 70s. It's measured and prescribed and described more precisely and there's a much larger vocabulary around it. The obvious counter argument is that times today are much faster than they were in the 60s and 70s but the sport is so different now that it's impossible to attribute those times to any specific thing.
But to the business of the long run as I said earlier, Elliott and Snell did them and subsequently so did everyone else. They didn't all do 22 miles, at least not regularly, but they did long runs. I believe that Walker's typical long run was 15 miles and of course he got under that 3:50 mark you're keen on. Would Snell have gotten closer to 3:50 if his long run was 15 miles or would he have been slower than he was? Would Walker have been faster if he'd regularly done 20 mile runs? I do completely agree with people here who have said overall mileage is much more important than a long run is and so to the question in the thread title I'd say it's important but I don't know what that important means in real life.
This is from a Lydiard lecture from 1999 on the "Champions Everywhere" website:
"As a practical guide, however, the work intervals should total about 10-15 minutes, or 5,000 meters; i.e., 12 × 400 meters, 8 × 600 meters, 5 × 1,000 meters, 3 × 1,600 meters, etc., with an equal distance of recovery jogging in between. If one athlete needs more or longer repetitions than another to gain the same physiological response, then he will just need to train for a longer period."
I don't consider equal distance jog to be short rest. Can you show me where Lydiard-trained athletes did that?
I think Kessler does too little mileage if anything. He'd probably benefit from a 8-10 mile long run, but nothing more. I heard he's longest runs are like 7 miles which is a bit too low in my opinion. I understand he has 1:43 speed but if he wants to improve his 1500/mile he needs to slightly increase the aerobic base training. 40-50 miles would be fine
Hobbs does 90 mpw, it's all doubles
He also does long runs sometimes when they fit in the schedule
everyone loves to be a QB from the chair, no one wants to actually know how ball is played
I am not American, and I know little about running history, but I know that jim spivey posted on here a long time ago and he said something along the lines of a long run for him was 45 minutes. He ran the 5k very well.
Very, very few have the talent and pure leg speed of Jim Spivey. Copying his training is probably not going to work for us mere mortals.