Jerome Drayton 2:10:08 Canadian record holder how did he train..?

So those guys just needed to try harder in races with zero difference in training? By that logic the whole field at major Marathons should run faster just because they are being dragged along.

All those guys were capable of what you say, AFTER they trained differently.

The record holders now are more talented and also train better.

SMJO wrote:

The old school methods always seem to boil down to miles and basic intervals.

I see scant evidence of stuff like hill sprints and all the stuff that Canova talks about with fluctuating pace in long fast reps as well as long fast runs.

Yes, people still work on "aerobic" and "anaerobic" but the similarities end there.

Malmo was doing "intensity modulation" workouts in the 80s; he has described them in many other threads. Hodgie-san's logs contain quite a few long fast runs in the 15-30k range. He called them "races". Bill Squires was having runners do long runs with surges for marathon prep.

I think that one thing that is better understood now is the use of threshold paces in training. Certainly many runners and some coaches already understood it back then, but now threshold training ideas have been studied and organized so that coaches can use them.

.....and people have perfected those even more. Similar, but different.

If those guys could be 25 again tomorrow they would only train exactly the same if they were really stupid.

It's like evolution. Just because it's a really small difference, doesn't mean it's not bigger than it appears.

High volume mileage - 150-200mpw.

Hodgie-san wrote:

Some good details on Drayton and the competition back in the day...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzkaYrZ2pCQ5OUZrNjduWTZuUUk/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks for the link Bob. This article originally appeared in Runner's World (I think it had already changed names from Distance Running News) and then the article was published again in a collection of articles in a book a year or so later.

Last Man Standing wrote:

Hold on...this guy really ran 150+ miles a week working full time?

This is motivating. I work 10 hours a day in finance... I need to start running 140+ again.

Um, right in the article it says he worked 35 hours a week. How many people work that little today? Judging from the place of work, it was a cushy low-stress public sector job.

Still more impressive than no job.

Back then you had to jump on the keys of a computer to get them to work so it wasn't quite as cushy as a desk job today.

SMJO wrote:

Hodgie, please. Why can you guys not let go the fact that you could have trained better?

I think it is clear that the principles of training are the same but to say that nothing is being done differently borders on delusional.

SMJO, all I am saying is that your "modern methods" are not "new". Athletes and coaches have trialed and errored their way through everything to find what works best for them and they always wind up with something very basic.

If you want to believe that the modern svengali coaches invented something new to progress athletics fine.

Hodgie-san wrote:

Athletes and coaches have trialed and errored their way through everything to find what works best for them and they always wind up with something very basic.

None of the runners you mentioned trained anywhere remotely like the Kenyan marathoners of today.

dream world lives on wrote:

Hodgie-san wrote:

Athletes and coaches have trialed and errored their way through everything to find what works best for them and they always wind up with something very basic.

None of the runners you mentioned trained anywhere remotely like the Kenyan marathoners of today.

do all Kenyan marathoners of today train the same way?

Question: In Kenya do they purposely build all of the schools 10 km's away from any populated areas? All of the top Kenyan marathoners claim that they had to run to school 10 km's each way? Does no one in Kenya live near a school?

dream world lives on wrote:

None of the runners you mentioned trained anywhere remotely like the Kenyan marathoners of today.

While training methods have obviously been refined over the decades, it's ridiculous to just assume that Kenyans are training so much better today than North Americans were in the 1970s.

The fact is that the population of certain tribes in East Africa are far more likely to have the genetic/biomechanical traits that are IDEAL for distance running: Legs that make up a huge proportion of their total height; narrow hips; skinny ankles; and small frames.

Obviously the best Kenyan marathoners *also* train really hard and have benefited from the continued advancements in exercise science. But times have been going down not just because of "evolving" training methods - it's also in large part due to the fact that the East Africans started to be exposed to world-class competitions.

Then, when it became clear that successful runners could make a small (or large) fortune by Kenyan standards, all of the country's athletic talent started being directed towards distance running, in the same way that all of Jamaica's athletic talent has historically been directed towards sprinting. In the US, talented athletes get diverted into all sorts of other sports, largely because they're more lucrative.

Anyway, yeah, don't ignore the fact that many East Africans are just simply built for distance running, and that they weren't competing much back in the day. Had they done the same training that was available at the time, they would have almost certainly posted times a couple minutes faster.

Therefore, Hodgie trained perfectly, and anyone running faster is (1) genetically superior, (2) has better completition, (3) has longer legs, and (4) doesn't live in Boston, or Canada.

Training is totally not important, people! Get it?!

East Africans are not Canadian wrote:

While training methods have obviously been refined over the decades, it's ridiculous to just assume that Kenyans are training so much better today than North Americans were in the 1970s.

I should have specified: It's ridiculous to assume that the *only* reason Kenyans today are so much faster than white people of yesteryear is because of better training.

Obviously training has gotten better - even white people are running faster now. And let me be clear: The top-several-hundred runners in the world obviously all train their balls off and have found good methods for them informed by the latest science/experience/trial-and-error.

But, given the above statement, when the vast majority of the world's fastest distance runners are from just a couple of tribes in East Africa, it's absurd to postulate that training alone is the definitive factor. It's a very rare white dude who can run as fast as a talented Kalenjin off the same training.

HRE wrote:

How do you explain people who trained like Lopes or Jones and didn't run as fast as Hill? And again, overwhelmingly, westerners are not running much, if any faster, than they were 30 or more years ago and times ALWAYS get faster as the years go on.

Because people who trained like Hill and didn't run as fast as Lopes and Jones.

HRE wrote:

dream world lives on wrote:

None of the runners you mentioned trained anywhere remotely like the Kenyan marathoners of today.

do all Kenyan marathoners of today train the same way?

Interesting blog from Reid coolsaet:

Reid is one of the top Canadian marathoners hoping to take down the Drayton record. He went to Kenya the past two winters and shares a lot of information about his running with a large group in Iten. Check the archive of winter months for details.

I don't see any important differences in his day to day running other than the environment and the group element from what Drayton did back in the day.

Sorry to say, but I don't think Reid or Eric Gillis will ever break the record. I think they are acceptable runners but lacking the talent necessary to run sub-2:10. I mean, watch the Fukuoka footage of Coolsaet compared to the Kenyans and Japanese and go from there...he is completely and utterly maxed out.Canada as a nation has probably a thousand people who, if nurtured properly and shielded from lucrative U.S. college scholarships, could break 2:10 in the marathon.The bottom line is too much attention is being paid to the wrong athletes....I can't be the only one tired of seeing Gillis and Coolsaet's face.

Peter Buniak wrote:

Looking at the video of this past weekend of the Fukuoka Marathon;I started looking at some of the history of the race. I see that Jerome Drayton set the still standing Canadian marathon record 2:10:08 back 1978 at the Fukuoka Marathon. Wondered how he trained & what he must think of the current state of Canadian marathon..?

And there were people who trained like Lopes and Jones who and ran slower than Hill. It's not just training.

If it's just training, if people are faster now because they know what to do, why has no Canadian bettered Drayton's record? They've had years of knowing the "proper" way to train.

biggerdog wrote:

Question: In Kenya do they purposely build all of the schools 10 km's away from any populated areas? All of the top Kenyan marathoners claim that they had to run to school 10 km's each way? Does no one in Kenya live near a school?

Sure. Lots do. None of them go on to become great marathoners, though.