Mo Farah's typical training week as prescribed by Alberto Salazar

It says directly that the pace on the tempo depends on altitude and so on, indicating that the typical week is not specifically for altitude training. I'd think that having the flexibility to run more of those recovery days as progressions according to feel would be of value.

i'd take the words "recovery" with a grain of salt.many of those recovery runs i'd wager are up and down steep hills at altitude and at a decent pace.interestingly, the hill repeats are at 200m.i'd expect you'd want to do maybe 8 x mile repeats pretty hard with partial recovery up a steep hill. the tempo run is entirely normal.

Looking at one week in isolation without any context to it tells you very little about an athlete's preparation

What you don´t seem to understand is that this type of training is not done week in, week out by the Canova runners.

I've come to believe that any professional athlete or coach out there that puts out "typical" weeks is actually not putting anything out remotely close to their training. I feel they are just doing this just to supply the media with info. and get over that portion of the job quickly so they can get back to their training.

I have my doubts that any serious athlete/coach who is competing against the best and wanting that 'edge' over their competition would want to supply the world with their training logs; especially Salazar who is as detailed as he is.

This training plan is very vanilla. You could probably pull that out of a Runner's World somewhere.

Perhaps Mo does a lot of relatively slow running in order to adjust his engine to fat burning. Remebember he is 3:28, sub 13 and sub 27 guy and holding relatively slow marathon pace is not his problem. Unlike guys that have been training for marathon for years and cannot run sub 13 or sub 27 and need different training more oriented towards marathon pace.

"It's completely different to training for the track,” he told Hart. “It involves more miles and it involves longer workouts. Before I used to reps of 400, 600 or 1,000 meters. Now a minimum that I'm doing in speed sessions is one-mile reps. Even my warm-up is four or five miles." In a typical week, his mileage adds up to 130.

"So I have to be here in Kenya. I must do the work. I could have sat back and stayed at home. But I need to come out here. I’m probably working twice as hard here as I would at home. And it’s hard. Sometimes I’m so tired; the pain of all those miles — 130 a week. There’s a 10-mile loop here called the Big Dipper. Brutal."

Most of you posting have never run 130+ MPW.

You have also never run 130+mpw at 8,000 ft.

8k feet makes a difference.

TLW wrote:

Most of you posting have never run 130+ MPW.

You have also never run 130+mpw at 8,000 ft.

8k feet makes a difference.

The biggest benefit of 8,000 ft is microdosing EPO and never getting caught.

Another Duck wrote:

The biggest benefit of 8,000 ft is microdosing EPO and never getting caught.

I agree.

Just saying that this schedule at sea level vs. 8k feet are two different things. Most people posting stuff about that schedule have never been to 8k feet let alone run high volume at 8k ft.

No. Technically *20 seconds* /mile slower (i.e. actual 2:28ish), but on dirt in Iten, more like 2:20 or better converted to sea level on harder surface. Still, *yawn*.

J.R. wrote:

Get Up On It Like This wrote:

A bunch of running around with a 2:20 marathon every Sunday. Yawn.

Plus 1 minute per mile.

Pikachu wrote:

My opinion stands.

5:40s on hilly Iten trails = 5:20 or faster at sea level for European/US athletes. And Doing long runs at 5:20 or faster is not piss slow in my book.

Of course the Kenyans are stronger at altitude. They are more used to it.

And please don't make the mistake and think 22 miles @ 5:40 was Mo's hardest workout.

I don't say that Mo runs 2:05 or faster om Sunday because I am not sure if Mo is a marathoner.

But I do say that good tempo runs and long runs at those speeds are plenty when you want to run a fast marathon. And last but not least I think that this week didn't include Mo's hardest workouts...

We will see on Sunday :-)

It's not slow, but it's not specific marathon endurance either. Count me as a hater—having seen Canova's marathon training schedules, I think Mo is going to get smashed. He'll still run well, I think, but he'll be several minutes back from the winners.

Not buying it wrote:

I've come to believe that any professional athlete or coach out there that puts out "typical" weeks is actually not putting anything out remotely close to their training. I feel they are just doing this just to supply the media with info. and get over that portion of the job quickly so they can get back to their training.

I have my doubts that any serious athlete/coach who is competing against the best and wanting that 'edge' over their competition would want to supply the world with their training logs; especially Salazar who is as detailed as he is.

This training plan is very vanilla. You could probably pull that out of a Runner's World somewhere.

Well except for Renato Canova, who posts the entire training logs of his best runners for all the world to see.

"It's completely different to training for the track,” he told Hart. “It involves more miles and it involves longer workouts. Before I used to reps of 400, 600 or 1,000 meters. Now a minimum that I'm doing in speed sessions is one-mile reps. Even my warm-up is four or five miles." In a typical week, his mileage adds up to 130.

"So I have to be here in Kenya. I must do the work. I could have sat back and stayed at home. But I need to come out here. I’m probably working twice as hard here as I would at home. And it’s hard. Sometimes I’m so tired; the pain of all those miles — 130 a week. There’s a 10-mile loop here called the Big Dipper. Brutal."

Thanks for this ^

I just looked through Mo's Twitter feed and had flashbacks of training in Iten. You go into oxygen debt just jogging up some of those hills. Every day there is competitive. "Easy runs" escalate quickly and often finish all-out.

I have no doubt that Mo's training has included ample intensity. My only concern is that he over-trained or failed to do enough marathon-specific workouts. His performance in New York is consistent with over-training, the way he fought back and the collapse afterward. No reason to go for it like that in a prep race, but that's the Kenyan way, or the way of a "champion", as Mo likes to call it.

Those 22-27 milers are done NO SLOWER than 5:40 pace. That means they could be anything from the workout Renato talked about to an "easy" 5:40 pace.

I've done 4 weeks @ 150 miles with speed.

I've done 4 hours jogging @ 6,500 to 10,500 in a simulator.

Mo has talent, but he's whining about how hard it is.

Coolsaet was running mileage in Iten at the same time as Mo,

and he didn't whine about how hard it was.

fred wrote:

I've done 4 weeks @ 150 miles with speed.

I've done 4 hours jogging @ 6,500 to 10,500 in a simulator.

Mo has talent, but he's whining about how hard it is.

Coolsaet was running mileage in Iten at the same time as Mo,

and he didn't whine about how hard it was.

where is he whining

an interview asks him a question, he answers

that's not whining

read carefully wrote:

Those 22-27 milers are done NO SLOWER than 5:40 pace. That means they could be anything from the workout Renato talked about to an "easy" 5:40 pace.

This exactly. The way it is worded makes the believe the run STARTS at 5:40 pace and works down from there. With that in mind, who knows how hard the workout ends up being, Mo could be flying along by the end of it for all we know.

Hell, 5:40 could be the first mile, followed by everything else 5:00 or faster, for all we know.