I'm old enough to remember David Bedford at his best. He was running 3-4 times a day 200 =/- mpw.
When he was healthy he was breaking world records and winning (World Cross by what at least was the biggest margin ever).
It's the mileage and I believe lifestyle has something to do with it- live a very simple life of running, resting and a simple, healthy diet.
So why wasn't Bedford running modern times if he was training that hard? Yup - he was missing something they all do today.
I don't know how old you are but just the difference in shoes keeps runners healthier.
Notice I said- when he was healthy. I started running in 1971 the best shoes available (my mail order only) were New Balance Tracksters. Google them.
Then diet- there are stories of Bill Rogers eating mayonnaise by the spoonful just to fil the tank.
The best runners were often much poorer than even today's second tier pro's- many holding down menial, often harder labor jobs.
So, yes- what they're were missing was good running shoes and an income that let them train and recover with the modern knowledge of diet and cross-training.
So what is it that enables athletes today to run double the mileage of runners in the past without fatiguing? We know the answer.
Zatopek and Pirie did +300km weeks. Pirie brags in his autobiography that he averaged over a marathon per day. So mileage like this is nothing new. What's weird is how much faster these East Africans are.
Some of it is the Kenyan/Ethiopian lifestyle growing up.
Some of it is their simple lifestyle at their training camps.
Some of it is shoes (not just super shoes but every day training shoes that offer more cushioning and support.
There are many factors and I think Kiptum is also super talented.
In the article he says that only the clumsy get caught doping and that he is regularly tested, sometimes every day, to make sure he isn’t popped. Hmm.
180 miles a week. 4 workout days. Two of which are 30-40k at marathon pace. It is mind boggling that anyone would recover from that to improve and do it again the next week.
Someone tell the double threshold guys they are doing it wrong.
To put that in perspective, 60-80k (50mi) of tempo at 4:35 pace per week. THEN two other faster workouts on different days of an hour each. THEN top off the mileage at 180 miles. THEN recover from that and do it again the next week.
How anyone could do that week let alone recover and repeat it, even absolutely doped to the gills, is mind boggling.
I am still confused as to why Kiptum would have Gervais Hakizimana as his coach, although I did note with interest Hakizimana's quote in the Letsrun article: "“Doping is everywhere in Kenya,” he laments. “But it is mainly the clumsy ones who are caught, victims of a lack of education and information.”
According to the AFP article posted on Letsrun, Hakizimana and Kiptum live together in Chepkorio, which seems even more bizarre.
On top of that, the article makes it seem like Kiptum doesn't really listen to his coach in training, at least in terms of reduced pace/volume: "“He’s in his best years but at one point I’m afraid he’ll get injured. At this rate he risks breaking, I suggested he lower the pace but he doesn’t want to."
Again, my understanding is that Kipfum speaks Swahili and some English, and Hakkzimana speaks French, so the relationship just seems strange.
Does anyone know how the coaching relationship works in Kenya? Did Hakizimana pay for Kiptums room and board and maybe give home a small stipend until 10 months ago when Kiptum ran and won Valencia?
None of Arthur's marathoners ran well in Tokyo. In 1969 he won the Canadian National Exposition Marathon in Toronto in 2:15:41 and got his all time PB of 2:14:38 in December at Fukuoka. In 1975, he'd have been 39 or 40, he won the Auckland Marathon. That's some fade.
I remember him as one of the best in the world in the early sixties. After '64 he no longer featured in that discussion. As I said, the consensus at that time was he tended to overtrain.
Julian may not have figured in the discussion of the best in the world after '64 but that doesn't mean he wasn't. Two fourteen in 1969 put you pretty high on the world list. Yes, there was always the idea that he overdid mileage at times. He once told Lydiard about having done some 200 mile weeks. Arthur thought of telling him jokingly, "If really want to be good you need to run 300 miles a week." But he says then he thought, "Jeff might just try that" and kept quiet.
But you're moving off topic here. Originally this discussion was about needing to take PEDs to run 300 km a week. My answer was that I'm sure there are people running that much who need some sort of drugs to run that kind of volume but that there are people who can and do run that much without drugs. Whether running that much is an optimal way to train, clean or not, is a different discussion.
One of my all time favorite running quotes was from Bedford when he said one day he was going out for his afternoon run and met himself coming back from his morning run.
I am still confused as to why Kiptum would have Gervais Hakizimana as his coach, although I did note with interest Hakizimana's quote in the Letsrun article: "“Doping is everywhere in Kenya,” he laments. “But it is mainly the clumsy ones who are caught, victims of a lack of education and information.”
According to the AFP article posted on Letsrun, Hakizimana and Kiptum live together in Chepkorio, which seems even more bizarre.
On top of that, the article makes it seem like Kiptum doesn't really listen to his coach in training, at least in terms of reduced pace/volume: "“He’s in his best years but at one point I’m afraid he’ll get injured. At this rate he risks breaking, I suggested he lower the pace but he doesn’t want to."
Again, my understanding is that Kipfum speaks Swahili and some English, and Hakkzimana speaks French, so the relationship just seems strange.
Does anyone know how the coaching relationship works in Kenya? Did Hakizimana pay for Kiptums room and board and maybe give home a small stipend until 10 months ago when Kiptum ran and won Valencia?
Reading comprehension is just not a strong suit.
Q: Why would Kiptum have him as his coach? A: Hakizimana let him join his group when he was a teenager so they go back years. Hakizimana was stuck in COVID times as he tried to build up his coaching career, and they formalized their relationship a bit more. Kiptum's mentor and the best running in the village Kipkemoi (African Games Champ etc.) was coached by him so it makes sense Kiptum would be interested in him. In this time Kipkemoi also got a 2-year ban for a beta-blocker, so he probably had more bandwidth to work with Kiptum.
Q: Why do they live together in Kenya? A: This is not particularly unusual in Kenya. In training camps, there're dozens of athletes and support staff living together under the same roof. This is not to say Gervais and Kelvin are bunking together, they just live in the same house in the village Not really weird, especially considering Gervais goes to Rwanda/France, so building his own house in Kenya might not make the most sense. How weird you must've thought it was when Sidney Crosby was living with Mario Lemieux? That was MUCH weirder given it being in the US.
Q: Why doesn't Kiptum listen to his coach? A: This is very common for young, ambitious athletes. Coach prescribes a pace, athlete feels good and runs faster than it. It's not outright insubordination like you make it sound.
Q: How do they communicate? A: The coach's first languages are Rwandan and French. That being said he can speak Swahili and English, which is something I don't know how you are missing based on the article. Kiptum speaks a decent amount of English, and is more comfortable speaking in Swahili. So they mostly communicate in Swahili with some English mixed in. Since they're around each other a lot, Kiptum has picked up on some of the Coach's native Rwandan and French. He might be curious in it — he's just running, eating and sleeping so picking his coach's brain around his native languages is a natural thing to do.
Q: How does this financially work? A: Kiptum has been earning on the roads since 2018. He won a local HM, and in 2019 he collected prize money at multiple HMs. He lives in a remote village, which I assure you is not like renting in New York City. His coach has some money from his racing days, and gets some money from his athletes, their management (Golazo), and so on. They probably also give him a place to stay as I hinted at above. Now that Kiptum is a multimillionaire in his village's term I'm sure he can afford to pay his coach pretty well and house him when he needs.
So what ? Everybody at top in literally every professional sport is taking peds. If someone truely believes that you can win the olympics or beat in an sport, you are delusional.
So what ? Everybody at top in literally every professional sport is taking peds. If someone truely believes that you can win the olympics or beat in an sport, you are delusional.
Complete rubbish. I’ve worked at the top level of athletics for a long time now and know many athletes competing at major championships and taking home medals (including gold) without breaking the rules. The athletes today are being held to a greater degree of accountability than ever before.
So why wasn't Bedford running modern times if he was training that hard? Yup - he was missing something they all do today.
I don't know how old you are but just the difference in shoes keeps runners healthier.
Notice I said- when he was healthy. I started running in 1971 the best shoes available (my mail order only) were New Balance Tracksters. Google them.
Then diet- there are stories of Bill Rogers eating mayonnaise by the spoonful just to fil the tank.
The best runners were often much poorer than even today's second tier pro's- many holding down menial, often harder labor jobs.
So, yes- what they're were missing was good running shoes and an income that let them train and recover with the modern knowledge of diet and cross-training.
No one - including Bedford - have suggested he wasn't running the times today on the same training - and recovering - was because of the shoes and diet.
So what ? Everybody at top in literally every professional sport is taking peds. If someone truely believes that you can win the olympics or beat in an sport, you are delusional.
Complete rubbish. I’ve worked at the top level of athletics for a long time now and know many athletes competing at major championships and taking home medals (including gold) without breaking the rules. The athletes today are being held to a greater degree of accountability than ever before.
You won't know who is doping. If they were, they certainly wouldn't tell you. Furthermore, they can dope and enjoy its benefits with a very low risk of being caught because most drugs will be masked. So why wouldn't they dope? To please you?
"Every week, Eliud Kipchoge does between 180 and 220km. Kelvin Kiptum is more between 250 and 280, sometimes more than 300km," said Hakizimana.
He is not running 300km every week.
This is something I think many runners don't understand- he (or anyone) doesn't run their maximum mileage every week. It varies.
I'd love to see some of the training runs of guys back in the 1970's. 100+, even 140 mpw were common- at least by word of mouth. There was no social media for instant gratification.
Often, Runners World would talk about a "typical" week and the runners were giving one of their highest mileage weeks.
This came up in another thread- the Kenyans seem to have simple workouts- a lot of mileage and workouts like 3 mins or 2 mins hard with 1 minute easy.
Our guys seem to run fewer miles and have more complicated workouts at various paces and distances of reps throughout.
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