Mihaly Igloi

I do not think this has been covered here yet. I think Coach Mihaly Igloi deserves a good deal of the credit for the upsurge of distance running in the United States in the 1960s and 70s. When Mike arrived here distance running needed a boost. The last time a US Citizen had come in the top 6 in the Olympic 10,000 was Louis Tewanima's silver medal in 1912. In 1960, Igloi runner Max Truex was 6th in the 10,000 beating some great runners including Krzyszkowiak of Poland, Merriman, Hyman and Pirie of England, his own former Hungarian athlete Sandor Iharos etc. And look what happened in 1964 in the distances. Truex added excitment to the sport and proved that the US could do well in the Olympic distances.

Great thread!

Tracy Smith, an Olympian in the 10K, was also coached by Igloi. T&FN reported a workout of his as 72x220. Right after that I met him at an indoor meet and I asked him about the workout, and he was very sheepish about it--said that Igloi did not want anyone else to know what the workouts were.

I knew Tracy well. A great runner and an extremely nice guy. I am honored to have trained with him and to have been his friend.

Igloi believed that discussing training with others could be demoralizing. He never published anything and most of his runners have remained fairly close mouthed. I have written a little because I believe that it is a shame if his legacy is lost. On the other hand, his system was him. He had the touch. He changed things day to day and set to set based on his vast experience, knowledge and what he saw the athlete doing at that time. I wrote down what I did but have no idea what any other athlete did nor do I understand quite how he did it. He got fantastic results for many and he could predict exactly what time a runner would run before they did so.

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just because it's thursday and on tuesdays and thursday, the place to be was Valley College with Laszlo

this is an interesting thread

Wow. I blundered into this thread and was fascinated. The more I read this the more I thought: Zatopek.

Did Igloi and Tabori develop their programs/systems after observing or talking to the man they called 'the Czech locomotive"?

Great thread.

How did Igloi deal with rookies to his program? Say, someone who had been running for some time (maybe 40MPW or so...for ex a HS underclassman) but had no interval experience?

My memory is that while I ran under Coach Igloi, the other runners were all college graduates with running experience.

I just finished reading Bob Schul's book "In the Long Run".

The book gives great insight into what training with Igloi in the 1960s was like. It gives a great account of the testing Schul went through when he first started with the club.

The book also tells the reader what it really took for Bob Schul to win an Olympic Gold medal. It describes to the reader what running in the early 1960s was like.

There are exciting, detailed accounts of Schul's major races and, especially the 1964 Olympic 5K final.

I enjoyed reading "In the Long Run" very much.

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I'd also recommend the Schul book for an insight into the Igloi's methods and the dedication of those who trained under him (not to mention the dedication of Igloi to his athletes). A lot of these guys sandwiched extensive morning and evening daily workouts around full time jobs. Outside support was almost non-existent. They were responsible for making American distance running competitive on the international level. I am a bit biased because these were the people I looked up to when I started running, but it seems that the contributions of Igloi and Truex, Beatty, Grelle, Schul among others have been too easily forgotten.

Why have most college programs gone away from the igloi method?

please give some examples of schools that were/are influenced by the "igloi method".

i will accept that many are heavily interval influenced but i have no knowledge of purely igloi influenced programs other than bob schul's wright state program.

thank you.

I don't know any collegiate teams that are trained in Igloi style, either. Perhaps because it is too hard to do well unless you were trained by him, personally, many years ago.

Um, USC club cross team?

As I mentioned earlier Caoch Igloi's system was Coach Igloi. He continued to study training methods and his system continued to evolve. It appears to me that Laszlo Tabori, Bob Schul, Joe Douglas and a couple of others that ran and studied under him also have systems that have evolved. Nothing stays the same and nothing has been written by those who understand Igoi's theories so they are being practiced by very few coaches even though they have had tremendous success in the past. Maybe this stresses the point that there not only one way to train. Also, I have always felt that you need an athlete with talent but you do not need a coach to develop that talent.

I want to go on and say that most of us still need coaches to teach us, guide us and motivate us. Hard training gets harder alone.

To also old--I enjoyed your post I feel that the coaches and the runners of the past do not get the respect they deserve. Very few of todays runners understand how good they really have it. It was not just the tracks, shoes and training that have evolved. There have been tremendous changes in our sport during the lifetime of the modern Olympics.

You mention lack of support. We did have the few hard core track fans who helped tremendously. An example is Doctor Harry Silver who Bob Schul mentions in his book. I too called on Doctor Silver a couple of times. He always helped us and he never mentioned money.

What we also had in the 1960s was fans. The indoor meets and the big outdoor meets had many thousands of spectators.

It was a great time for track and field!

Orville, I appreciate all your informative posts.

One of the things that stirred my interest in running in the first place was the coverage of all those Beatty-Grelle indoor duels that so often showed up in the early days of The Wide World of Sports. Imagine, major network coverage of track meets.

Orville, that was a good question posted previously: how would Igloi or Schul deal with a neophyte or one with limited experience?

Some mention was made of a 2-3 week rest phase where you ran "as you liked for 90 minutes...varying the pace" or something like that. Would Igloi or Schul advocate a base-building phase prior to intervals? ex: maybe start with a 10-minute run and add a minute each day for 2-3 months until the trainee could run nonstop for, say, 90 minutes?