Reminds of Trump quote repeat lies enough some people will believe it.
I know not a political thread, but Goebbels said it and Biden tried to compare Trump to Goebbels. Trump did say the above in some form during a speech, but it was about how the media lied about him, not him lying. carry on. :)
Only one problem with your coaches beliefs -- Seb Coe didn't train like that. There's a thread on LRC that repeated the words from Seb Coe himself.
I remember running magazine stories back in the day describing the low mileage and gym/circuit training that Sebastian Coe and Joachim Cruz did. It turned out the Coe and Cruz camps actually ran more mileage than they let on (didn't count warmup/cooldown or neglected to mention higher offseason mileage). Even Bill Dellinger wrote stories about circuit training as if it was significant to Oregon runners success, which was never true (arguably the opposite the few years they did it).
I had a coach who ran at Oregon under Dillinger and we basically did Oregon workouts which included a lot of circuit intervals.. so a exercise run do a exercise run,,, etc
Of course he didn’t. In 1998 though, no message board to look that up. My coach was no doubt going by some magazine puff piece article. That’s all he had. In a nutshell, the difference between then and now.
Your really going to try? It wasn't 1998. I think the guy who spoke to Coe was a fella named Martin. A regular here 20 years ago.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.
It didn’t matter if in reality Seb Coe actually ran 150 miles a week or 15 miles per week. My coach believed Coe ran 40 miles per week, that was the right way to train because if it worked for an Olympic champion, it would work for us, so that’s what we were going to do. I don’t believe that attitude was uncommon at that time. The question is not what Coe truly did but what was believed about his training.
If you’re saying that Coe ran more than 40 miles per week, I don’t disagree (I think it’s almost a certainty that he did based on what I know of running now). But that information wasn’t known then, at least to my coach, and those he talked with.
Your really going to try? It wasn't 1998. I think the guy who spoke to Coe was a fella named Martin. A regular here 20 years ago.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.
It didn’t matter if in reality Seb Coe actually ran 150 miles a week or 15 miles per week. My coach believed Coe ran 40 miles per week, that was the right way to train because if it worked for an Olympic champion, it would work for us, so that’s what we were going to do. I don’t believe that attitude was uncommon at that time. The question is not what Coe truly did but what was believed about his training.
If you’re saying that Coe ran more than 40 miles per week, I don’t disagree (I think it’s almost a certainty that he did based on what I know of running now). But that information wasn’t known then, at least to my coach, and those he talked with.
Your coaches ignorance is what matters, not reality. I see. Why didn't I consider the theory of alternate realities? Ugh.
This is spot on. We, the mortals, were the sparring partners for the elites. Oh well.
Our workouts 1-3 times per week were races. The 80s were when the average 5K in my area went 14:45-14:55, the big races were low 14:00s and under 29:00.
We would routinely run the second half of a 10 miler in 28:30, we left everything on the road.
Needless to say we did what the coaches and local experts told us to do; hindsight.
Your coaches ignorance is what matters, not reality. I see. Why didn't I consider the theory of alternate realities? Ugh.
That is precisely the problem. It is what people think that matters, not the actual facts. This is because we base our actions on what we think is true, not what might actually be true.
If you run 50 miles a week in college and half of it is all-out intervals, your coach's belief that this is what Coe did is the "reality" your body is confronted with. You can't separate your coach's beliefs from your coach's style and approach.
Did any of you guys run in college in the 1990s? What was your experience like? I loved college running but man, we were so slow compared to kids these days... Why do you think that is? I mean, I know why I was slow (because I am a bad runner), but that doesn't explain the rest of the entire nation.
I just had an interesting conversation with some friends who ran for UO in the 1990s. I ran D3 in the same era and had a similar (though much slower) experience.
They said "Bill [Dellinger] had us run really hard in practice because all the workouts were set up for the fastest runner on the team. So if you weren't Matt Davis or Karl Keska, you were running all out on every interval just to stay with the group."
This was my experience as well. I "raced" every interval just to hang with the team because I didn't want to get dropped. I never ran my own pace. I was always hammering until I got dropped (which eventually happened on every interval).
The second thing they said was "We ran a lot of base mileage over the Winter and then busted out PRs in the first or second race of the season. But then after that, we'd only improve by a second or two all season long. The next 12 weeks were never much faster than the first or second race of the year because we were exhausted."
Summing up, they said, "It was like we had three races a week -- Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday -- and never really recovered or improved."
Do you have a different theory about why the times in the 1990s were so slow?
Not enough varied training is my guess.
I ran HS XC from 1998 to 2002, no college, but I can somewhat relate.
Same exact thing happened in the training cycle all four years I ran (bolded part). I'd run tons of base over the summer (500-600 miles) and had great early season races, but I'd peak in mid-September. Worn out by Conference.
This post was edited 35 seconds after it was posted.
Workouts WERE set up for the fastest guy, and he was hammering to match what the NCAA champion had done at the same school years earlier.
Shoes sucked, nobody knew how to eat, and nobody knew anything or knew anything about anyone else. We had days "on our own," which was only so we wouldn't be racing every single day.
I'm from a bit earlier, high school in the late 70s/early 80s and college in the mid 80s, but this is a bigger aspect that many today might realize. We honestly had no idea what was out there beyond what we could learn from local papers or dedicated magazines. It was usually easy to learn what the fastest people in the state or nation were running, since they'd get covered extensively, but beyond that it was difficult to get information. Maybe you could talk to the guys in your conference when you saw them throughout the season and compare times, but you often went into your regional/district/sectional (whatever your state called it) not really knowing what you were going to see as far as times and so forth, and at state you might know you were X seconds off the top guy but you wouldn't really know whether that would mean you would be seeded 2nd, 10th, 20th, or what. The internet really altered the game in the very late 90s and 2000s. My kids went through their running careers knowing everything about everyone they would compete against. I'm sure that knowing everyone's times is a big motivator.
Baumspage in CLE came out in 1999 and had very primitive HTML pages about runner profiles in the CLE area. Such as Marc Sylvester from St. Ignatius--I don't know how I remember all of this....good times
I feel like they were slower in the early 2000s than the 1990s. Holman, McMullen and Lassiter were pretty good in the 90s in college. Brian Hyde ran 3:35 for William and Mary in 1995 in season. Lagat ran 3:30 after the college season in 1999 (though he ran for Kenya at the time). Outside of Joe Falcon, who was really good in the 1980s? Spivey ran 3:37 in college. Pretty good and he was better post collegiate.
Leo Manzano who graduated college in 2008 and made the Olympic team that year was the guy to break the trend and start a wave of fast runners that have kept going. He got Silver in 2012. Centro got a World medal after his senior season in 2011. Then Silver in 2013 and Gold in 2016.
Grant Robison ran 3:35 for Stanford in 2003. The US was so bad at the 1500 in 2004, that Robison’s time from 2003 qualified him to run in the 2004 Olympics as the third member of the team, even though he didn’t even make the finals of the 2004 Olympic Trials. Only 2 runners from the finals made the Olympic standard over that 2003-2004 two year period.
Did any of you guys run in college in the 1990s? What was your experience like? I loved college running but man, we were so slow compared to kids these days... Why do you think that is? I mean, I know why I was slow (because I am a bad runner), but that doesn't explain the rest of the entire nation.
I just had an interesting conversation with some friends who ran for UO in the 1990s. I ran D3 in the same era and had a similar (though much slower) experience.
They said "Bill [Dellinger] had us run really hard in practice because all the workouts were set up for the fastest runner on the team. So if you weren't Matt Davis or Karl Keska, you were running all out on every interval just to stay with the group."
This was my experience as well. I "raced" every interval just to hang with the team because I didn't want to get dropped. I never ran my own pace. I was always hammering until I got dropped (which eventually happened on every interval).
The second thing they said was "We ran a lot of base mileage over the Winter and then busted out PRs in the first or second race of the season. But then after that, we'd only improve by a second or two all season long. The next 12 weeks were never much faster than the first or second race of the year because we were exhausted."
Summing up, they said, "It was like we had three races a week -- Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday -- and never really recovered or improved."
Do you have a different theory about why the times in the 1990s were so slow?
Nope. You summed it up. Coaching was terrible. We constantly raced in practice. We sucked in races. If I ran my current “age-graded” equivalents in college I would have been nearly two minutes faster in an 8k. I think the better coaches back then were the ones who had the kids run 6’ miles most of the time, 5:20 on a 10 mile tempo, and then one short workouts. The bad ones had athletes blast mile repeats one day, 400s another and then race on Saturday. I had one of the bad coaches.
By memory I remember running multiple 0.75-mile loops in 3:58 (5:20-ish pace by memory), the coach yelling at me to stay with the leaders, and kicking butt early on in the season, then getting hurt...
I feel like they were slower in the early 2000s than the 1990s. Holman, McMullen and Lassiter were pretty good in the 90s in college. Brian Hyde ran 3:35 for William and Mary in 1995 in season. Lagat ran 3:30 after the college season in 1999 (though he ran for Kenya at the time). Outside of Joe Falcon, who was really good in the 1980s? Spivey ran 3:37 in college. Pretty good and he was better post collegiate.
Leo Manzano who graduated college in 2008 and made the Olympic team that year was the guy to break the trend and start a wave of fast runners that have kept going. He got Silver in 2012. Centro got a World medal after his senior season in 2011. Then Silver in 2013 and Gold in 2016.
Grant Robison ran 3:35 for Stanford in 2003. The US was so bad at the 1500 in 2004, that Robison’s time from 2003 qualified him to run in the 2004 Olympics as the third member of the team, even though he didn’t even make the finals of the 2004 Olympic Trials. Only 2 runners from the finals made the Olympic standard over that 2003-2004 two year period.
I moved to Columbus and learned of the legend of Bob Kennedy....that in and of itself is fascinating. He made Ohio proud. He still has the course record at Worthington HS (14:35?), IIRC, set in '87.
I ran D1 from 1998-2002. My freshman/sophomore years we had a European foreigner who used his coach from home. He’d be off on his own mostly running mileage and threshold efforts. He always seemed to peak well. Everyone else was hammering each other and trying to stave off injury.
I trained competetively 2000-2004. And in my teens (13-15) I trained periodically (1995-97).
We didnt know HOW to train. Every run was more or less a race or became racing at some point.
The coaches put everyone thru the exact training regime. There was really no understanding how each person responds differently to training.
There was an aversion to high mileage (especially in the 90s) and we seldome aimed to reach a certain mileage or tracked the miles run (early 2000s). It was not a case of "I need to run a certain milage". (I prolly ran about 45 to 90 km per week during those years 2000-2004). It was "go fast n hard or go home", "train hard, win easy".
I switched coaches after about 1,5 years (around 2002) and the training I started with the 2nd coach was much harder than I had done before. I remember I was suffering in the beginning. With my first coach I used o run sessions of say 6 x 1 km (ca 1 min rest) at around 3:15-3:30 min per km. We were a small group (maybe 3-7 runners), about the same age (early 20s) and it was more laid back and sometimes, if I had been injured or ill I used to run with the girls which meant paces of even slower, maybe ca 3:40 min per km.
With my new training regime I was in a big group of highly competetive male adults, many of them national (or in a couple of cases even international) elite. Each interval session was crushing. I used to do 5x1 km (ca 2 min rest) at around 3 min per km. But the best guys was prolly doing them at 2:45-2:50 min per km. It was killing.
Not to mention the WEEKLY hard interval session on track with spikes. A pyramid session 600-500-400-300-200 all out with 5 min rest in between was a recurring theme. Totally insane in hindsight and with todays knowledge.
Yet I ran more or less the same race times. I remember observing this fact (training harder but racing not improving) BUT unfortunately I didnt reflect and react or to it.
With todays knowledge I can def say I flourished while doing more threshold inspired work around 3.30 min/km while I suffered (broke down) while trying to compete in training with others n running around 3 min per km which def was above my threshold level at that time.
It took me a couple of years to adapt to the new traing regime and then, when I was finally flying, I got injured which eventually ended my running career.
In hindsight I should have run more and less intense. Slow, easy distance running, regularly twice a day and with 2-3 threshold sessions per week. That is, the Ingebrigtsen base training would have fitted me great, but Im not sure how they train during race season or the weeks leading up to race season...
The thing is with that style and philosophy of training you DO get results, so it is very misleading and easy to get sucked in. It's why people kept doing it.
If you read through this thread the problem almost everyone sites is that they did hit PRs, it's just those PRs were all over the place, often very early in the season before the grind just did them in. Sometimes you could get lucky and hit a big race at the right time, so what do you do? You think, well it did work, I must have just done it wrong before, I need MORE intensity next time.. and you just go dig that hole even deeper.
The thing is with that style and philosophy of training you DO get results, so it is very misleading and easy to get sucked in. It's why people kept doing it.
If you read through this thread the problem almost everyone sites is that they did hit PRs, it's just those PRs were all over the place, often very early in the season before the grind just did them in. Sometimes you could get lucky and hit a big race at the right time, so what do you do? You think, well it did work, I must have just done it wrong before, I need MORE intensity next time.. and you just go dig that hole even deeper.
Some about right... If I remember correctly, Tyler Hamilton (the cyclist) said, "There is no such thing as over-training. If you feel like you are over-trained, it just means you hadn't done enough before."
If we were training hard and it wasn't working, it was because we weren't in good enough shape. Only solution, train harder!
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