Long runs in the 70s

Our state (and many others) were surveyed and laid out in grid. You didn't even need a map to measure distance. Just follow the "section lines". To run around a section gave you four miles. In a city... most of your main streets were section lines. Of course you could be a few feet short on a run because you can't run in the middle of the street. If you ran four miles around a section with big wide streets you would probably be 100-150 feet short over four miles.

If there were a bunch of hills on a section road... the miles could actually be a few feet long (due to being surveyed) . But if the roads were fairly flat... they were pretty much right on the mark (if you measured them with a wheel.)

They crippled themselves.

to a somewhat large degree not untrue. but it was fun!

Who do you have in mind?

I was part of that group. I didn’t start running until my last two years of college and my teammates were from Minneapolis. One Thursday night we all drove down to Ron’s house and did a ten miler. As I remember it was Ron, Garry Bjorklund, Hoag, Slack and a few of the guys from Blue Ribbon.

I didn’t do the Saturday long run. Not sure I would be ready for it because it would be uptempo (sub 6) and I hadn’t done many marathons at that point.

There was a real strong legacy of who’s who Minnesota runners back then doing the Saturday long runs together. I join later and was able to hang until about the two hour mark. We joked that guys would duck the long runs on Saturdays to race because it was easier to go to a race.

Some mid week workouts were pretty tuff. We did many (16 to 20) 440s and 880s at better than 5 minute pace. Or we did ten milers at tempo (5:30 pace or better) to go along with the long runs.

On a side note, the super fast guys like Ron/Steve/micheal seaman (died), Garry, Mike, Beardsley, Mortenson, kempanen don’t show up for the Saturday long run but a fragment of the group still exists but runs slower and not a long. The primary focus these days is the hot chocolate after. Some still compete at the US cross country championships and have won the plus sixty the past few years but they are the youngsters.

I spent many an hour measuring courses - parks, trails, etc. using a wheel - well before GPS became publicly popular. Also used a Jones counter to measure road courses if I was concerned about accuracy (a method used to certify road race courses) . The early GPS gadgets were often less accurate, especially for loops and trails as it was based on a satellite tangent.

In a local park, we (me and another coach) marked an accurate perimeter in chalk (used to mark ball sport lines) to make sure runners didn't cheat doing workouts. So yes, we did take measuring seriously, so we did have a good idea on how far people ran.

That wasn't atypical for the 80s. My coach who was an Olympian had me doing short long runs after the first speed workout of the week of 24 miles then Sats were 26-32. Pretty normal for high mileage runners I'd say.

The elephant in the room remains. If runners in this era were training as hard as runners do today - and some even harder - why were they so much slower?

I was one of those high mileage guys in the 70's. Although I can't speak for everyone, I had a career that yo-yo'd from good performances to long periods of injury. I think many who thrived on high mileage were worried that cutting back would hurt performances/progress. Also, I know I never felt "tapered" and rarely fresh for even my better performances. Athletes now have many scientific advantages on recovery.

If athletes were training similar mileage to those today then are today's athletes also overtraining? You are aware that drugs aid recovery?

But quite apart from the issue of recovery, why were runners in your era so much slower than runners today on the same mileage?