Questions about Summer of Malmo

You're welcome Chris.

Seriously, if you do SOM this Summer pay particular attention to the efforts. If you are in doubt whether or not you're running too hard then you probably are. The only sessions that should leave you feeling close to spent are those shorter 150m-300m session. But it should be a short-term dizzy feeling, with tightness in the calves and possibly buttocks the next day. You should not feel fatigues from the workout. Any fatigue you feel should come from the accumulation the newness of running doubles. That too, should pass.

Hey, Malmo - just wanted to throw in a quick "thank you" for the thread. Your post with the breakdown of the four runner types was the most useful clarification on SoM I've seen (go figure), and it helped answer the questions I had rolling around in my head. (I'm pretty clearly one of your type 4 fitness/competitive runners... I had the enlightening experience this year of doing an indoor tempo run during a blizzard and having one of the Pitt runners do 200m repeats past me like I was crawling. hogtied. in molasses. I'm not too slow at ~10k for a recreational runner, but that raw speed thing completely escapes me.) Appreciate the further guidance!

-Quack, 3 days / 30 miles of daily doubles in to SoM.

Yep, I can gauge efforts pretty well. We're going to have a group doing this and the challenge will be to get THEM to run within themselves. I've been doing doubles for 1.5 years now with a high of 140, so I'm used to them. That 140 was just a test week, I maintain 90-110 throughout the year. The brand new thing to me will be doing the workouts during the summer. I have no speed, 4:09 1500 versus 30:56 10000, so I will be looking forward to those speed workouts. I was always working on speed in the last three weeks of the season. I'm well aware of what you think of that mindset, haha.

I put the Summer of Malmo into video format (by just posting the text into the movie making cartoon format you've seen on tv commercials). It isn't perfect and the celebrity impersonator for Malmo happens to be wearing Adidas clothing, something I doubt happens often. It's just a fun interpretation of the program to augment your understanding after you have thoroughly read it. Enjoy it in three parts.

http://psutafalumnigolf.blogspot.com/2009/04/summer-of-malmo-movie.html

malmo wrote:

OldXCguy wrote:

I've seen lots of SOM threads, so I was reluctant to click on this one, but I'm glad I did. Lots of good advice here. Malmo, most generous of you to take the time to address the specifics of a number of posters.

You're welcome. Good to see that there's something here even for smart people.

Not necessarily smart, just heavily experienced and well- edumicated. ;-)

You are awesome. Thanks. That is about what I thought too, but wanted to hear another's perspective. Thanks for taking the time to gather the information and post it here.

Will Summer of Malmo work for the people who run the steeplechase as well?

I'm a girl in high school and we don't have the steeple as an event, but after a group of us told our coach we wanted to try it he said he will take us to some junior olympic events so we can try it. He said we would just do our normal XC summer stuff with some extra hurdle stuff and that I need to do 2 hurdle technique days and learn to jump the barrier so I don't kill myself.

The Steeple is just for fun. Is it ok to do the Summer of Malmo and the steeple stuff or is that against the rules?

Malmo,

What kind of summer/fall training would you advise for someone out of college who just wants to concentrate on breaking 4-min for the mile in the winter/spring? Train for longer distances and enter road 5ks/10ks/HM in the fall and then transition training after?

Bonkers, I'd advise you to find Summers races, even if it's all-comers events at 400/800/1500/3000/5000 and compete. Train fro the immediate, not some far-off scenario int the future that may never happen.

No I would not recommend that you train for HM's to run the mile. If you are going to race 5k, 10k, and HMs then train for those distances.

Thanks for the response Malmo. How would you go about training for these summer races. Say I was aiming to hit my peak in mid-June for NCAAs and then that would be my last planned race before taking "down time". Out of school after this year so no XC season or any commitments.

Malmo, thank you so much for posting you senior year training log. Some observations ...

1. Amazing rhythm to that training. Three "hard" days a week (or should I say "days of substance") and that is enough! I keep sending well prepared HS athletes (who have trained one step back from the precipice) to college where they are trained straight into oblivion. More is so often too much in this sport.

2. People, AND COLLEGE COACHES, do we notice a race EVERY week except the one leading up to the championship races? Those early races have a function and to my mind provide very important, specific training rewards. You can race every week, not destroy yourself and actually prepare to eventually run a low 8:20 SC.

To all you college coaches who now race four times a season, thanks for helping destroy the sport ... much appreciated, you bastards.

Malmo;

Approximate distance of North Choke Hill?

SomeCoach,

North "Choke" Hill is North Oak Lane in a residential neighborhood in State College, PA. There are actually two hills going in opposite directions. You start at the bottom and run the steep hill, which is about 0.2 of a mile. Then jog back down, and continue in the opposite direction on the "flat" hill, which was 0.3mi.

I can't remember if it was 10 loops (20 hills) or 5 loops, making it 10 hills. I'm leaning towards the latter because 14 loops would be 28 hills and I just don't see us ever doing 28 of anything. One thing for sure, it was a very challenging workout.

While I agree with you that todays programs run fewer races, I would have preferred to run 2-3 fewer times than we did. Had I asked, Groves would have trusted my instincts and let me skip as many races as I wanted. After all, I had only missed 3 races during my entire college career.

A summation of Harry's schedule over the course of the season. Other than a couple fewer races, I can't think of any way that I would have changed things. That's probably one of the reasons why we were so successful. In the four years that I was at Penn State we finished 10th, 10th, 4th, and 13th at Nationals. That's with only one blue-chip recruit over the course of four years, and he wasn't a cross country runner. Take away the teams that relied heavily on foreign recruits and we become 6th, 6th, 1st and 9th. My senior year we lost Bob Snyder, our #2 runner to injury, a guy who would be 34th and 9th in the next two NCAA meets. It was a solid group of walkons that didn't take shit from anyone.

Hills

1) 10x North Choke Hill

3) 12x North Choke Hill

4) 12x North Choke Hill

7) 14x North Choke Hill

Fartlek

1) 3.5 miles fartlek

6) 4.5 mile fartlek

9) 4 miles fartlek

10) 4 miles fartlek

11) 3 miles fartlek

Repeat 400s

1) 10x400 (65) w/200 jog

5) 10x400 (63.5) w/200 jog

8) 15x400 (63) w/200 jog(60)

11) 10x440 (61,61,62,60,60,61,60,61,60,59) 60s jog

Repeat 800 XC

1) 6x800 XC 2:30 w/2:00 jog

2) 8x800 XC (2:10, 2:20, 2:12 ,2:28, 2:17, 2:15, 2:13, 2:10) w/3:00 jog

6) 8x800 XC (2:14, 2:17, 2:10, 2:21, 2:13, 2:14, 2:18, 2:07) w/2:00 jog

9) 10x800 XC (2:14, 2:16, 2:08, 2:22, 2:12, 2:13, 2:16, 2:07, 2:32, 2:15)

Mile repeats

7) 1 mile (4:34), 4x400 (66), 800(2:16), 400(62)

10) 1 mile (4:28), 2x800 (2:12, 2:15), 1 mile (4:37), 2x800 (2:15, 2:12), 1 mile (4:53), 400(61)

1.5 mile repeats

5) 2 x 1.5 mile XC (7:00, 7:06)

8) 3 x 1.5 mile XC (6:58, 7:36, 7:55)

10) 4 x 1.5 mile XC (7:07, 7:17, 7:14, 7:24)

Tempos

2) 5 mile time trial in 25:03

3) 3 mile XC in 14:43

4) 9.5 mile by-pass loop in 49:00

10) 9.5 mile by-pass loop in 53:10

12) 10 miles hard

Races

3) vs Villanova 5 mile XC in 24:21.6

4) vs West Virginia 5 mile XC in 24:39.2 course record

5) vs Kent State 6 mile XC in 29:01 course record

6) Penn State Open 5 mile XC in 24:01

7) vs Georgetown, William & Mary 5 mile XC in 23:54.7 course record

8) Central Collegiates 5 mile XC in 24:19 course record

9) vs Pittsburgh 5 mile XC in 24:03

10) USTFF XC 10k race in 29:33 course record

11) NCAA XC Championship 10,000m XC in 29:07

12) AAU XC Championship 10k race in 30:44

Malmo;

Great shit ... so, my next question would be; if you had pulled out a race every other week during the middle stretch of the season, what would you have substituted? What would have been a more effective stimulus than the race? As I see it, your mileage wasn't stunted by the amount you raced.

And, an additional question concerning Groves. Did he have a specialty area as a coach, or was he cut from the Doherty/Bowerman school where they could coach any event with great success?

Somecoach, you're thinking too much. It really wouldn't matter to me back then what i would have done as opposed to racing, so 35 years later it matters less to me. A tempo run. Hill repeats, 800s or miles. All of it would have been fine to me. Easy running would have been fine to me too.

The Eastern USATFF meet was useless. We ran it because we were hosting it. I could have done without it. I could have done without week 3, 4 or 5. Although the PSU Open was a handicap race, so it was inherently fun to run.

Groves knew every aspect of track and field. He was definitely not some smarmy suck-up who kissed all of the right asses. He chaired many committees over a span of decades becasue of his knowledge depth of experience in the sport.

He had a deep love for cross country, which made him one of us.

When it gets down to it, I think that he really liked training the 800-1500s most of all. That' were is initial success was, being the coach of Howell Michael and Juris Luzens back in the 60s. But when he got to Penn State he didn't get guys like that, instead he developed national champions and American Recordholders from scratch. It wasn't until the early/mid 80s did he start to get the types of runners I think that he really liked to develop. Those 800m runners. I would have loved to have some of those guys for support too.

I'm not sure where I fit in with the previous posters so.

malmo wrote:

1) How fast can you normally run 10x400m and with what rest?

2) How fast/far are your normal tempo runs?

3) How fast could you normally do 200m repeats, lets say 10-16 of them?

4) how fast can you normally do mile repeats? How many of them? How much rest?

5) What are your best times

.

1) Last one I did in February was 83 with 90 sec recovery

2) My team doesnt do tempo runs really. I can do 3 x 1.5 miles @ 6:40

3) 35-37 sec

4) 6:20 w/ 3 minutes rest

5) 1600: 5:18 3200: 11:55 3 mile xc: 19:07

Thanks

malmo wrote:

9) 10x800 XC (2:14, 2:16, 2:08, 2:22, 2:12, 2:13, 2:16, 2:07, 2:32, 2:15)

Malmo. Why such a big difference in pace?

malmo wrote:

9) 10x800 XC (2:14, 2:16, 2:08, 2:22, 2:12, 2:13, 2:16, 2:07, 2:32, 2:15)

SHSXC wrote:

Malmo. Why such a big difference in pace?

It's cross country.

(2:14, 2:16, 2:08, 2:22, 2:12, 2:13, 2:16, 2:07, 2:32, 2:15)

( flat, flat, down, uphill, flat, flat, flat, down, uphill, flat)

malmo, how did you invent the summer of malmo? were you frustrated by the scads of people out there who ran themselves reckless during the summer months? or those (mainly HS runners) who didnt train enough?