Pretty much like that, except you measured legs of you running routes and spliced them together. It wasn't difficult to add and subtract back then. Math was still the same.
I used a measuring wheel if a car wasn't appropriate. Spent time accurately measuring parks and trails - wasn't that expensive to buy. In fact in a local park used chalk (for marking fields) to outline running routes so kids didn't cheat while training on these marked loops (measured by wheel). GPS wasn't necessary and is rather less accurate given the problems with consistency in trails and loops (like parks). People treat GPS as if they are 100% accurate - they are not. One of my early wheels did not have a recording mechanism, so I had to count each meter manually!! A real nuisance when interrupted ( often had to start the counting over again!!).
A bike with an odometer would work as well. I did that before I got my license.
And they did run fast. In my state growing up a lot of the all-time 3200 (2 mile conversions) were from the 70's to early 80's. Then nothing fast seemed to be run in the 90's and early 2000's. Then around 2010-2015 things really started heating up again (before 'super shoes'). Over half the all-time top 20 was run from 2011-2015
There is an interesting correlation here. It was in the late 80's into the 90's when distance running especially in high school went downhill.
It was at the same time that Runners World started their "less is more" crap. Also, more people started running for fitness and the Hobby Jogger era began.
Those parents (and the coaches who really didn't know running) were big on running lower mileage.
The coach at my school (who I replaced) had a mother (I kid you not) go to the AD with some books and RW magazines to "prove" to him that the reason her daughter was so slow was that he had her running too much.
They were running about 20-24 mpw. She said- He should be playing more soccer and ultimate frisbee in practice.
I tried to do that in the early 80s. 10 weeks at 110mpw when I was 15/16. It did not end well. And I did not improve as much as I had hoped. I now believe my endocrine system was damaged as a result of this training.
The truth is that your talent is the baseline, and all additional work is subject to decreasing marginal returns.
I take your point, I absolutely do. But I think of a summer as 12-13 weeks, so roughly 77-84 per week. Call it 80. It’s a reach for a high schooler but not so ridiculous that most kids couldn’t do it as upperclassmen. As long as they stay within themselves and don’t hammer anything.
Freshman year in college we ran 70 mpw, and I remember thinking how high that was, that “this was real training.” But 70 is just getting started. You’re correct that there may be diminishing returns after 70, and it isn’t necessary for 98% of runners. Certainly 100 mpw in high school isn’t for everyone. But the main thing is there is a tendency to hammer everything at that age, and that taxes the body far more than the actual mileage.
Currently, summer break is just ten weeks, but in the 70s and 80s, it was 12-14 weeks, Memorial Day to Labor Day.
Somebody else mentioned that those kids, 70s and 80s kids were just built different. And that is true. We were constantly outside, playing soccer, football, basketball, hockey, skateboarding, whatever until the sun went down. Riding bikes everywhere. In essence, “training” during the formative years versus starting from scratch. High level soccer is like a constant fartlek every damn day.
I tell my runners that this is the biggest difference. We were not sedentary, because we were always outside doing some sort of athletic playing. Those miles added up quickly. We would play full court basketball for hours in the summer. It had to be at least 6 miles per day, and I would guess ten for the most active players on the court. Add in the bike ride to the park, and even more exercise. Definitely more exercise than playing 2K all day.
I take your point, I absolutely do. But I think of a summer as 12-13 weeks, so roughly 77-84 per week. Call it 80. It’s a reach for a high schooler but not so ridiculous that most kids couldn’t do it as upperclassmen. As long as they stay within themselves and don’t hammer anything.
Freshman year in college we ran 70 mpw, and I remember thinking how high that was, that “this was real training.” But 70 is just getting started. You’re correct that there may be diminishing returns after 70, and it isn’t necessary for 98% of runners. Certainly 100 mpw in high school isn’t for everyone. But the main thing is there is a tendency to hammer everything at that age, and that taxes the body far more than the actual mileage.
Currently, summer break is just ten weeks, but in the 70s and 80s, it was 12-14 weeks, Memorial Day to Labor Day.
Yes, the good ole days. Where I live, summer is still 12 weeks if you hit the ground running the first day after school ends and don’t take a recovery week or two. But, a recovery week is still advised. Plus, I might include the first couple weeks of the cross country season in the calculus.
My advice to any serious kid who wants to kick a$$ in high school, still run in college and at a high level, and then keep at it for a couple years through that first, post-collegiate Olympic cycle (call it age 24-25) is to run 80mpw before senior year. Run the 1000 mile summer. You will get fast and start to find your potential. But it’s not so much that you can’t continue to develop.
All of college, for the serious athlete, will be going from 80-110 or more mpw. Hopefully no indoor season or a very minimal one. Post collegiate will be 120+ for those who can handle it at any distance from 5000m and above. A runner should know by age 25 whether it’s worth still trying to be an elite athlete or to throttle it down and run for fun & fitness. That’s my life and running advice, that I followed myself. And, if you are one of the lucky ones who can balance marathon training while working full time, then more power to you. You only die once.
I was in high school in the mid to late 70s and graduated HS in 1979. Back then, many kids who were into running were of course obsessed with the accuracy length of training courses/ race courses and distances (for obvious reasons, no different than kids today). One thing we did (myself and some team mates) is we purchased bike odometers and rode most of training courses with our bikes in the off-season or on weekends. This gave us a pretty accurate measure of the most-common courses. We even spray-painted little marks for mile splits on the street curbs of on trees/rocks. We only checked our heart rates at the end of a run. Not knowing your heart rate, running was most more by feel or perceived-effort.
agreed. you didn't see 5k road races before the downhill slide you are describing. The short distance road races were all 10k. 'Masters' was anyone over 40. No every 5 year age group category, just OPEN and MASTERS.
And they did run fast. In my state growing up a lot of the all-time 3200 (2 mile conversions) were from the 70's to early 80's. Then nothing fast seemed to be run in the 90's and early 2000's. Then around 2010-2015 things really started heating up again (before 'super shoes'). Over half the all-time top 20 was run from 2011-2015
There is an interesting correlation here. It was in the late 80's into the 90's when distance running especially in high school went downhill.
It was at the same time that Runners World started their "less is more" crap. Also, more people started running for fitness and the Hobby Jogger era began.
Those parents (and the coaches who really didn't know running) were big on running lower mileage.
The coach at my school (who I replaced) had a mother (I kid you not) go to the AD with some books and RW magazines to "prove" to him that the reason her daughter was so slow was that he had her running too much.
They were running about 20-24 mpw. She said- He should be playing more soccer and ultimate frisbee in practice.
agreed. you didn't see 5k road races before the downhill slide you are describing. The short distance road races were all 10k. 'Masters' was anyone over 40. No every 5 year age group category, just OPEN and MASTERS.
Somebody else mentioned that those kids, 70s and 80s kids were just built different. And that is true. We were constantly outside, playing soccer, football, basketball, hockey, skateboarding, whatever until the sun went down. Riding bikes everywhere. In essence, “training” during the formative years versus starting from scratch. High level soccer is like a constant fartlek every damn day.
I tell my runners that this is the biggest difference. We were not sedentary, because we were always outside doing some sort of athletic playing. Those miles added up quickly. We would play full court basketball for hours in the summer. It had to be at least 6 miles per day, and I would guess ten for the most active players on the court. Add in the bike ride to the park, and even more exercise. Definitely more exercise than playing 2K all day.
I get home from school/practice, have dinner and meet friends out. We'd walk, ride bikes, play pick up basketball whatever.
What's funny is I've read just about every word on Jeff Nelson from these boards and I do remember a poster claiming to be his coach set the record straight saying that 140 miles was peak and it was at the end of summer where they were increasing their mileage 10% a week starting at 50. Still, this is crazy to me to keep pushing the mileage that far! I feel like most coaches/programs would cap that off around 70-80. But, as it's been stated, the era was a special one for running and running mileage especially. Jeff and Lin must have covered every inch of trail in Griffith Park that summer of 78!
Starting at 50 and increasing 10% per week would get one to 140 at week 12. So perhaps that’s what they did? Crazy.
70-80 mpw is probably the right amount for a high school upperclassmen who wants to be really good and run in college but still leave a lot of room to improve. The 1000-mile summer is roughly 80 mpw.
Below is the thread where Dave Kemp chimes in about it and yes it looks like it was the peak of a 12 week summer build that produced 140. Again, that still means the last month was all over 100 and over in Griffith Park there must have been plenty of elevation gain in those miles. What's cool about Dave and that Burbank team was that Jeff was the peak of the program but there were a number of great athletes coming out and it seems like a lot of those guys were inspired by Mark Covert, famous for his decades long running streak. As a Valley guy myself, it's super cool to see what these guys accomplished back in the day!
Looking back a few pages in the thread, I appreciate the comments that people added about Jim Ryun's training in high school, and possible burn out. It is true that top athletes in that era had limited financial return on their running careers, so I stand corrected.
It is also true that Ryun stepped away from competition from June 1969 - spring '71. He'd already been a world class athlete for 5 years, the break did him some good, I'd wager. Jim Ryun came back, ran his famous duel with Marty Liquori in '71, won the trials in '72 with a 51 point final 400, and ran a 3:52 mile before the Olympics in Toronto, a time only he had ever bettered.
I was 15 when Jim fell in Munich. I was sick over it, I loved the guy and he was my hero, in truth he still is. Total bad ass.
I ran in eastern Massachusetts' Dual County League in high school, the league was strong in the distances. Several schools were renowned for the guys running tons of miles in the summer (Acton Boxborough, Concord Carlisle) in preparation for XC. Not so my school! I'd be surprised if we ever ran more than 35mpw. Alberto was one town over (Wayland); we knew that he was training quite a bit harder than we were, with the result that he could race the 2-mile at the our race pace for the mile. I guess you could argue that Al's bulldog attitude did not lengthen his competitive career, however.
I do recall Ryun talking about pressure after he dropped out of the AAU Mile in 1969 and leaving the sport for a while. But it wasn't about pressure of hard training. It was about the lead up to and aftermath of the '68 Olympics and dealing qith expectations of the public.
He ran a tremendous race in Mexico. Keino just ran an even more tremendous one and had a ton of help from Ben Jipcho in terms of rabbiting and also probably benefitted a lot from being able to do what he wanted in preparation for that race for as long as he wanted. Ryun could not do that. He started '68 off with mono. As I recall he wasn't even in the first Trials Meet that year. But there was very little recognition from the public as to how good a race he'd run in Mexico, less than there were comments about how he'd failed.
If you want to make an argument that he was physically burnt out by '68 I think you could. He had mono. That can come from extended physical exhaustion. And even if he'd gotten over mono once he came back he was very good at times but also inconsistent. In July or August of 1972 he ran a mile in Toronto in his third best ever time, 3:52. But a few weeks earlier at a meet in Oregon (I think) he ran 4:18 or something along those lines.
I was fan. I wanted him to win in Munich just as I'd wanted him to win in Mexico. But based on his 1966-67 seasons I expected he'd win in Mexico. I really didn't expect he'd win in Munich although I thought it very possible.
So yes, there was an issue with burn out or exhaustion. But he never really talked about any physical burnout and has said many times since that he would have liked to stayed on longer if he'd managed to find a job compatable with world class running.
agreed. you didn't see 5k road races before the downhill slide you are describing. The short distance road races were all 10k. 'Masters' was anyone over 40. No every 5 year age group category, just OPEN and MASTERS.
I tell kids this all the time. They have a hard time believing road races were all 10K, except the occasional 8K, and the Firecracker Four on the Fourth of July. The only 5K you could find was a HS race. Running all those longer road races made the 5K seem so much easier.
I guess Ryun probably was the origin point for a lot of this kind of training, both volume and intensity. Bob Timmons' famous "swimming" workouts adapted to the track sound insane nowadays but back then that was probably the best known reference point for a lot of coaches and the proof was in the pudding with Ryun's sub 4s. Still, I marvel at the ability to run this type of training. I'm still not sure if the original Serna training I posted is an actual weekly schedule or just a list of workout days that would've been done within a week of mileage. Assuming that it would be two double workouts a week for about a month in the example, which while tough given the workouts is not as insane. Given Ryun's training though, I do have to wonder if guys back then just thought you could hit the track pretty much every day and you just run 5:20s if you're tired instead of 4:50s.
I remember reading that for the 1972 trials in Eugene, Ryun did his warmup up in the mountains and then took a helicopter down to the stadium because of his problems with the pollen levels in Eugene.
What's insane was that his 4x300 was actually 8 300 meter efforts. Crazy!
Also, most won't realize that tracks back then were asphalt or even concrete, and distance runners often used sprint spikes because there weren't really distance ones.
agreed. you didn't see 5k road races before the downhill slide you are describing. The short distance road races were all 10k. 'Masters' was anyone over 40. No every 5 year age group category, just OPEN and MASTERS.
I tell kids this all the time. They have a hard time believing road races were all 10K, except the occasional 8K, and the Firecracker Four on the Fourth of July. The only 5K you could find was a HS race. Running all those longer road races made the 5K seem so much easier.
I was in Omaha, and just about every 10K had a 2-mile "Fun Run" start right after. I ran and 'won' several of those when I was 11 or 12.
I remember reading that for the 1972 trials in Eugene, Ryun did his warmup up in the mountains and then took a helicopter down to the stadium because of his problems with the pollen levels in Eugene.
This is true. Ryun was hired by Bohemia Lumber Co. to photograph timberlands to help prepare bids. Bohemia flew Ryun in from an unknown (to me) location right before his races. You can fantasize Ride of the Valkyaries blasting down mountain canyons now. :-)