Authentic Training Log - Seb Coe

This thread poses an interesting question... Why count Mileage? Many count it as a trophy. Some like to brag they run 100,120, 150 or whatever. Would Coe do this? No. He would say things like "I broke threeworld records in 51 days" if he wanted to brag. I count mileage so as not to hurt myself. If I go over 120, I overtrain and risk injury. When I jog to practice a mile and a half at close to 10 minute pace, I don't think it has any training benefit for me whatsoever; I count it so I know those miles are in my legs thoguh. Would Coe at sixty (or so) miles per week need to do this. Probably not. Another ten or twenty miles would not have put him at the risk a 100+ runner would incur. So Coe might have only counted mileage that he saw had a training benefit. The rest were as irrelevant to him as walking would be. It's a fair argument.

AAA Youth Cahmpionships

1,500m, Aug. 1973

1. School Races, 800m and 1,500m (800m+1500m + 2x800m WU/CD @ 6:00min/mi) = 3.9km

2. 15km on road (15km + 2x800m WU/CD @ 6:00min/mi) = 17.6km

3. 4x400m + 4x150m (1600m + 600m + 2x800m WU/CD @ 6:00min/mi) = 3.8km

4. 3x[10x200m] (6000m + 2x800m WU/CD @ 6:00min/mi) = 7.6km

5. 7x800m (5600m + 2x800m WU/CD @ 6:00min/mi) = 7.2km

6. 2x150m + 6x100m + 2x200m + 8x80m (1940m + 2x800m WU/CD @ 6:00min/mi) = ~3.6km

7. 2x200m + 4x400m + 4x200m (2.8km + 2x800m WU/CD @ 6:00min/mi) = 4.4km

====

48.1 km (as the book says).

Now add in 7x2x3200m WU/CD (that was not reported b/c running slower than 6min/mi is not "training") makes for an additional 44.8km + the occasional (2) 8km run, makes for an additonal 60km not in the total. We now have 108km (67mi) and in the context of the 28.4km of running he did faster than AC pace (6min/mi) gives us a quality percentage of 26.3 (very close to the Ray/Benson 20% rule).

Could we say that Coe and co. assumed that the easy 2mi WU/CD would be included by all in addition to easy jogs, if for nothing else than shaking out the legs?

Of course, this was from a racing part of the season, not giving an accurate picture of volume during the preperation phase.

So what happened between 1985 and 1996! Looks suspicious to me.

Been There wrote:

Another ten or twenty miles would not have put him at the risk a 100+ runner would incur.

Risk would incur from having too high a percentage of one's training volume at quality. In this respect the 100mpw guy will have an easier time getting in quality than a lower volume athlete.

trackhead--

I understand your point but have never bought into that philosophy. i will train a fify mile week runner with an 8k speed session just as easily as a 100 a week runner. Granted there are extremes but I think mileage has little to do with speed volume. I know a lot of coaches that agree with this and a lot that don't. I think mileage injures more runners than running an athlete at to high a percentage of quality. Look at Spiker when he was a senior in High School. His speed was about 90 percent of his week total. And he did this to avoid injury.

Peace

Same thing that happened here: stagnation and then correction. Stangnation because less European/American athletes were seriously in athletics, and correction because proper coaching and true professionalism arrived and established themselves in Africa (and in this case, because Japan knuckled down on proper marathon training).

2:15:25 Paula Radcliffe GBR 17 12 1973 1 London 13 04 2003 2:17:18 Paula Radcliffe 1 Chicago 13 10 2002 2:18:47 Catherine Ndereba KEN 21 07 1972 1 Chicago 07 10 2001 2:18:56 Paula Radcliffe 1 London 14 04 2002 2:19:26 Catherine Ndereba 2 Chicago 13 10 2002 2:19:39 Yingjie Sun CHN 03 10 1977 1 Beijing 19 10 2003 2:19:46 Naoko Takahashi JPN 06 05 1972 1 Berlin 30 09 2001 2:19:55 Catherine Ndereba 2 London 13 04 2003 2:20:43 Tegla Loroupe KEN 09 05 1973 1 Berlin 26 09 1999 2:20:43 Margaret Okayo KEN 30 05 1976 1 Boston, MA 15 04 2002 2:20:47 Tegla Loroupe 1 Rotterdam 19 04 1998 2:21:06 Ingrid Kristiansen NOR 21 03 1956 1 London 21 04 1985 2:21:12 Catherine Ndereba 2 Boston, MA 15 04 2002 2:21:16 Deena Drossin USA 14 02 1973 3 London 13 04 2003 2:21:18 Mizuki Noguchi JPN 03 07 1978 1 Osaka 26 01 2003 2:21:21 Joan Samuelson USA 16 05 1957 1 Chicago 20 10 1985 2:21:21 Yingjie Sun 1 Beijing 20 10 2002 2:21:22 Yoko Shibui JPN 14 03 1979 3 Chicago 13 10 2002 2:21:31 Svetlana Zakharova RUS 15 09 1970 4 Chicago 13 10 2002 2:21:33 Catherine Ndereba 1 Chicago 22 10 2000 2:21:45 Uta Pippig GER 07 09 1965 1 Boston, MA 18 04 1994 2:21:45 Masako Chiba JPN 18 07 1976 2 Osaka 26 01 2003 2:21:47 Naoko Takahashi 1 Bangkok 06 12 1998 2:21:49 Naoko Takahashi 1 Berlin 29 09 2002 2:21:51 Naoko Sakamoto JPN 14 11 1980 3 Osaka 26 01 2003 2:22:07 Tegla Loroupe 1 Rotterdam 20 04 1997 2:22:12 Eri Yamagughi JPN 14 01 1973 1 Tokyo 21 11 1999 2:22:19 Naoko Takahashi 1 Nagoya 12 03 2000 2:22:19 Gete Wami ETH 11 12 1974 1 Amsterdam 20 10 2002 2:22:22 Lornah Kiplagat KEN 01 05 1974 4 Osaka 26 01 2003 2:22:23 Catherina McKiernan IRL 30 11 1969 1 Amsterdam 01 11 1998 2:22:31 Svetlana Zakharova 2 London 14 04 2002 2:22:31 Margaret Okayo 1 New York, NY 02 11 2003 2:22:33 Lyudmila Petrova RUS 07 10 1968 3 London 14 04 2002 2:22:36 Lornah Kiplagat 2 Chicago 22 10 2000 2:22:43 Joan Samuelson 1 Boston, MA 18 04 1983 2:22:46 Reiko Tosa JPN 11 06 1976 4 London 14 04 2002 2:22:48 Ingrid Kristiansen 1 London 10 05 1987 2:22:48 Tegla Loroupe 1 Rotterdam 18 04 1999 2:22:54 Lidia Simon ROM 04 09 1973 1 Osaka 30 01 2000 2:22:56 Harumi Hiroyama JPN 02 09 1968 2 Osaka 30 01 2000 2:23:03 Catherine Ndereba 2 New York, NY 02 11 2003 2:23:05 Ingrid Kristiansen 2 Chicago 20 10 1985 2:23:05 Marleen Renders BEL 24 12 1968 1 Paris 07 04 2002 2:23:07 Svetlana Zakharova 1 Chicago 12 10 2003 2:23:11 Yoko Shibui 1 Osaka 28 01 2001 2:23:12 Susan Chepkemei KEN 25 06 1975 4 London 13 04 2003 2:23:14 Naoko Takahashi 1 Sydney 24 09 2000 2:23:14 Lyudmila Petrova 5 London 13 04 2003 2:23:17 Shujing Zhang CHN 13 09 1979 2 Beijing 20 10 2002 2:23:18 Shujing Zhang 1 Seoul 16 03 2003 2:23:19 Susan Chepkemei 5 London 14 04 2002 2:23:21 Fatuma Roba ETH 18 12 1973 1 Boston, MA 20 04 1998 2:23:22 Joyce Chepchumba KEN 06 11 1970 1 London 18 04 1999 2:23:22 Lidia Simon 2 Sydney 24 09 2000 2:23:24 Lidia Simon 1 Osaka 31 01 1999 2:23:25 Fatuma Roba 1 Boston, MA 19 04 1999 2:23:29 Rosa Mota POR 29 06 1958 3 Chicago 20 10 1985 2:23:30 Mari Ozaki JPN 16 07 1975 5 Osaka 26 01 2003 2:23:31 Esther Wanjiru KEN 27 03 1977 3 Osaka 30 01 2000 2:23:33 Valentina Yegorova RUS 16 02 1964 2 Boston, MA 18 04 1994 2:23:35 Constantina Tomescu ROM 23 01 1970 2 Chicago 12 10 2003 2:23:37 Min Liu CHN 29 11 1983 1 Beijing 14 10 2001 2:23:41 Chunxiu Zhou CHN 08 03 1979 2 Beijing 19 10 2003 2:23:43 Olga Markova EUN 06 08 1968 1 Boston, MA 20 04 1992 2:23:43 Marleen Renders 1 Paris 09 04 2000 2:23:43 Takami Ominami JPN 15 11 1975 1 Rotterdam 21 04 2002 2:23:43 Constantina Tomescu 6 London 13 04 2003 2:23:43 Lornah Kiplagat 3 New York, NY 02 11 2003 2:23:44 Catherina McKiernan 1 Berlin 28 09 1997 2:23:46 Tegla Loroupe 2 Osaka 31 01 1999 2:23:47 Maura Viceconte ITA 03 10 1967 1 Wien 21 05 2000 2:23:51 Lisa Martin-Ondieki AUS 12 05 1960 1 Osaka 31 01 1988 2:23:52 Constantina Tomescu 2 Amsterdam 20 10 2002 2:23:53 Catherine Ndereba 1 Boston, MA 16 04 2001 2:23:55 Lornah Kiplagat 1 Osaka 27 01 2002 2:23:55 Catherine Ndereba 1 Paris 31 08 2003 2:23:57 Joyce Chepchumba 1 Chicago 11 10 1998 2:23:57 Derartu Tulu ETH 21 03 1972 1 London 22 04 2001 2:23:57 Xiaolin Zhu CHN 20 04 1984 3 Beijing 20 10 2002 2:23:58 Marleen Renders 2 Berlin 26 09 1999 2:24:01 Jelena Prokopcuka LAT 21 09 1976 7 London 13 04 2003 2:24:02 Yanan Wei CHN 06 12 1980 2 Beijing 14 10 2001 2:24:06 Adriana Fernández MEX 04 04 1971 2 London 18 04 1999

been there:

in my experience the developing adolescent can handle only so much quality (I think it's well under 20%, closer to 12%).

Certainly training volume is progressive. You start wherever they are when you get them, and know that they need to progress to certain markers if they are to continue to improve and have the ability to one day compete with East Africa. You take this attitude with every athlete you caoch, especially your no talent slugs.

Matching the quality volume to the training volume will keep them healthy -- it doesn't make sense for a 40mpw HS soph to do the same number of quality miles as the 70mpw senior.

Mileage will injur if improperly implemented. Increasing too quickly or running too much as too fast a pace will certainly bring about injury. But if more or less follow the pattern of the Africans (lot's of running, few races, low percent of quality) the kids will run well and stay helathy (and ultimately stay in the sport for life).

Ringer wrote:

I disagree. Running 600s on the track with say 90 sec recovery - do you count the 200 metres to get back to the start? Of course you don't. That's not training that's just getting about. And what about the 5 metres rolling start, and 10 metres through the finish line? Do you count those? Is the effort 15m longer, or do they reduce the recovery distance logged?

ok we don't count those very short recoveries, but the warm ups and cool downs, if they are 15-20 miles a week in total, do we ignore them or count them?

Young athletes have a right to know this information, especially if you are writing a book about how Seb Coe trainined.

if you leave out 15-20 miles of jogging/slower paced running from your book, then you are not telling the whole story. IT'S NOT LYING, BUT IT'S NOT TRUTHFULL EITHER.

from

http://www.fitnesssports.com/lyd_clinic_guide/lydpg21.htmlV

.

Last Two Weeks of Freshening up!

Monday: Windsprints 50 meters by 12 to 20 times.

Tuesday: Easy fartlek or Aerobic running, 1 hour.

Wednesday: Time trial over race distance (fast)..

Thursday: Fast relaxed striding 100 meters by 6.

Friday: Jog 1/2 hour.

Saturday: Race or time trial 1/2 the race distance.

Sunday: Aerobic running 1 hours to 11/2 hours.

Monday: Windsprints 50 meters by 10 to 16 times.

Tuesday: Time trial, 400. 600 or 1500 meters.

Wednesday: Fast relaxed striding 100 meters by 6.

Thursday: Jog 3/4 hour.

Friday: Jog 1/2 hour.

Saturday: The First Important Race.

Sunday: Jog 1 hours to 11/2 hours or more.

Peter Snell ran 1:44 of max. 50mpw!!!

Proof that Low-Mileage works!!!

I was at the clinic where this progam what given out. And I can tell you from talking to my Lyidard. And the one thing that most people never see when looking at Lyidards training is that steps are built on steps. Snell did not run over 50 miles a week when RACEING! But the rest of program and most of the year Snell would have been hitting 100 miles or more a weeek. One of the main ideas of Lyidards training plain. Is that once the time of the season for raceing comes around your not going to get any better. So you can keep the fitness you have, but not GAIN any. Along with this, idea is the fact that since you can keep fitness, but not gain fitness once the raceing seasons starts. It is in one\'s best intrest to do as little as they can can without seeing a drop in fitnesss.

So your wrong it is not the low milage training that give people the abilty to race fast once the peak part fo the season somes along. It is the fact that they have gotten so fit from high milage training. That they are able to drop there training down to a very low point. Get fresh, and race at there highest level with these fresh legs.

Lyidard makes it clear in his programs that once you hit this point, your fitnesss is going start going down. Your not getting any better, just getting the most out of what you have done. Lyidard allways says when you race you need to be \'\'fresh and sharp''.

And at the clinc that this information was produced at he also noted that with a 12 week base cycles the most any of his runner where able to race at there peak was 6 weeks on the track. At this point he stated they would start to loose from and they would have to rebuild again.

well said SolRichards

that was a joke you fools, thats the same as posting a Seb Coe Trainings-Log of the last 3 weeks prior to the Olympic-Games and then say:Look, he only ran 36miles/week.

trackhead,

totally agree as far as preps are concerned. Even two athletes with the same track times should do different volume of speed based on age and overall mileage. I was referring to collegians or post collegians who for whatever reason had peaked their mileage. It is certainly a rare prep who will do 8k of speed in one session.

Arthur wrote:

that was a joke you fools, thats the same as posting a Seb Coe Trainings-Log of the last 3 weeks prior to the Olympic-Games and then say:Look, he only ran 36miles/week.

obviously your idea of a joke is way too advanced for us.

Great post!

Arthur

"that was a joke you fools, thats the same as posting a Seb Coe Trainings-Log of the last 3 weeks prior to the Olympic-Games and then say:Look, he only ran 36miles/week"

And who, pray-tell, said that?

And when did he say it?

Just give us a quick cut and paste of the quote you're talking about ...

We can wait.

Martin

Martin, what do you think about my point that, as a service to younger runners, someone needs to give an accurate estimate as to how much warm up/cool down mileage Seb Coe actually did?

The slower pace running is a vital part of the training, if it wasn't then Coe and other athletes wouldn't do it.

If Peter and Seb Coe choose to simply overlook the exta 15-20 or even 30 miles of slower pace running, then they are being economical with the truth, in the same way politicians evade questions they don't want to answer.

JohnnyO

I was under the impression you were bored with this topic ...

In any event, I disagree with a few of the points you\'re trying to raise.

By posting the log at the beginning of the thread I wanted to try and illustrate two things:

1. Dispel the myth that morning runs "weren't counted" by Peter & Seb, which has been posted here more times than I care to count and 2. To show that a mileage figure for a given week includes ***at least an overwhelming portion, if not all, of the miles covered in a given week***.

As I said before, I\'m not going to go through the maths -- but if the figures don\'t add up *to the last metre*, well, then, feel free to add 5 miles to a given week, if you feel you must.

That said, this in no way vaults the totals of miles covered in a given week to 100 -- as has also been sworn here on various occasions -- or to anything approaching that.

As to your second point: recovery jogs and easy miles are two VERY different animals in my book.

Three sauntering laps after a hard 10x400 metre session is simply not *mileage* in the sense that most people who follow the sport understand it to be.

Thus, in that respect, I can\'t imagine any coach/athlete - Coe, Ovett, El G or Alan Webb - who would make an effort to include these *miles* in their weekly total.

You also seem to think that slower-paced running is the garbage laps an athlete does before and after an interval session.

It isn't.

Slower paced running is indeed important -- very important, in fact -- and it was a part of Seb's training. Check out the entries for Week 1 - Thursday "easy recovery run of 6 miles".

That, for Coe, is slow paced running at that point in the season. It\'s included in the logs and included in the totals for the week.

I really don't know how to be any more clear about this.

But if you feel you must - go ahead. Add 2 miles warm up and warm down to Seb's track intervals.

That **still** wouldn't vault his winter base phase miles to the levels that were being bandied about here: as I'm sure you'll agree that it's unlikely he did a 2 mile warm up, ran for 7 miles, did a 2 mile warm down and logged "7 miles steady" in his training log for November.

What I was trying to show here was the *detail* that went into Seb's training diaries, and thus to dispel the notion that morning runs were somehow "forgotten" or that warm ups and cool downs would push his mileage numbers into the upper stratospheres.

Even if we disagree here, surely you'll concede that a winter base phase would include fewer interval sessions, and thus fewer opportunities to "miss" warm up and cool down miles. (And I'm not saying that this was even the case in the summer, lest I be taken out of context)

Thus, while a summer log **might** look to exclude **some** garbage laps - perhaps even 5 miles of said laps in a given week - it's unlikely that a winter base log would exclude morning runs (as have been shown in the summer log posted, which included them religiously) or warm up miles, as there would be no need for separate warm ups during a base phase of 85% distance runs.

Please tell me that you at least accept this as fact.

As for your point about truthfulness -- well, you must understand that if you approached Peter and asked him about this, and said you wanted to have a figure upon which you could base a training system for either yourself or another athlete, he'd probably tell you to get lost.

Seb's training is not a template -- it worked for him, it might not work for others. The exact numbers aren't important (49 miles 55 miles, 63 miles) -- the range of numbers is very important (60 miles ... 80 miles ... 100 miles).

If you're looking for cooking recipe -- you won't find it. What you will find are a set of principles around which you can tailor a training programme.

Here's what Peter himself said:

"What is special is that Seb's training is tailored specifically for him and his requirements, by a coach who is in a unique position to have a detailed knowledge of his charge.***MY POINT IS THAT THERE IS NO MAGIC FORMULAE*** A logical and intelligent application of widely known acts, damned hard work by athlete and coach alike, no neglected details, meticulous care, dedication. These are the requirements."

I really don't know what else to say.

Martin

"Fri 13 July: Introduction to race pace, but not deeply anaerobic ? after warm-up, 30x200 m @27/28 seconds; cool-down of two laps @ 9-sec pace followed by easy jogging."

does that mean he didn't run any 800-1500m pace session till July?