Very simple, blue-collar and workman like log Malmo. Reminds me of my HS coach's summer training. He was 2 mile HS state champ and went on to run on a college national champ CC team and was an AA steepler. Incredible coach and mentor. All he did in the summer was 10 in the morning and 15 @ night 6 days a week. Sundays off. Would note that he was hurt a lot and I'm sure this type of mileage (and his body type) contributed to that, but dude was all-in all the time.
Very simple, blue-collar and workman like log Malmo. Reminds me of my HS coach's summer training. He was 2 mile HS state champ and went on to run on a college national champ CC team and was an AA steepler. Incredible coach and mentor. All he did in the summer was 10 in the morning and 15 @ night 6 days a week. Sundays off. Would note that he was hurt a lot and I'm sure this type of mileage (and his body type) contributed to that, but dude was all-in all the time.
This sounds like bs to me. We certainly would have heard of him? Who was your hs coach? He would be legend with Summers like that? Body type? Makes me curious. Just say it - what's his name?
Dale Fleet. C'mon man. You've been on these boards long enough to know I don't BS. And if you know Dale, you know the body-type. Now tell me why you called BS?
I remember reading that Bill Rodgers would raid his fridge in the middle of the night, eating oreos and mayonnaise out of the jar, then would ask himself "do I run this much so I can eat like this or do I eat like this in order to run so much?".
Frank shorter said in his book that he averaged around 130 miles for a decade (1970-1980), which has to be some kind of a record.
These guys were pioneers, the limits weren't really known back then. You also have guys like David Bedford and Jos Hermens who ran close to 200 miles a week at some point, but would have very short careers because of it.
That being said, I think they must've been, at some point, guessing their total mileage at times.
Interesting interview and blow by blow account of Bedford top 20 races.
I'm older now, so I can't do quite the mileage I did in my 30s, but I just cracked open my 2018 log. These are mileage totals and some of my tougher workouts. I ended up with 4900 miles for the year. (I'm amazed by people who are hitting north of 5000; even with blocks like this, it only takes a little bit of injury or illness to take the annual total way down.)
105
105
115
100
126
101
121 (including a hilly 26-mile progression in 2:38)
Frank shorter said in his book that he averaged around 130 miles for a decade (1970-1980), which has to be some kind of a record.
I'd like to see the actual quote/numbers. "Averaged 130mpw" in most cases turns out to be "up to 130 mpw" and gets repeated so many times that people take it as the gospel word.
The quote is "Sometimes I felt so good, so strong, that I almost scared myself. One week I ran a total of 180 miles. Two runs a day weren't enough for me, so I ran three times, morning, noon, and night. Even on relatively easy weeks we never went below 120, which was like running 140 at sea level. From 1970 to 1980 my training log averages 17 miles a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks in every golden year."
So it was actually 120 not 130 for the decade, I misremembered that, nevertheless just as impressive.
Bedford and Hermens both dealt with career ending injuries early on in their careers and yes it was due to the unrelenting training they did. Off of wikipedia about Bedford: "His later career was hampered by injuries, principally achilles tendonitis, believed to have been caused by his high training mileage".
How about not second guessing something everyone says and maybe show a bit of humility? You're not the only one who knows something about running.
Dale Fleet. C'mon man. You've been on these boards long enough to know I don't BS. And if you know Dale, you know the body-type. Now tell me why you called BS?
Whats with the anger? The first time I've ever heard of you is today.
Anyway, these three important clues weren't factual, thats why I thought it was bulls/hit.
1. Washington State XC, while a perennial top 5 back in the day, never won NCAA XC when Fleet was there. Maybe not ever.
2. Fleet was never All America in either the steeplechase or cross country. Not even close in either event.
3. Body type? Nothing notable.. About the same as me, maybe an inch taller, but without the chest/shoulders.
Now you can clearly see why it sounded like bs to me.
FWIW, Dale was the lone bicyclist who paced me around the Island on my ill-fated attempt at the Mission Bay Marathon, then recovery beers afterwards. He may have attended one of the steeplechase camps that the AAU put on ever year.
Never heard about his Summer training regimen. I always like reading about runners when they test their limits. In high school one week every August I'd see how many miles I could run in a week. One year I did 130 miles. The next year I did 151, and I got laid for the first time. Testing my limits. ;-)
This post was edited 29 minutes after it was posted.
Modern food has lost 40% of it's nutrients in the last 50 years--and that's assuming you eat the good stuff, not ultra processed.
A small part is people didn't track their miles as accurately. It wasn't practical to know the exact distance so people didn't care. My college teammates said X Loop was 16 miles. When I run it now with GPS it is more like 14.7.
There also wasn't that much else to do. Lots of stuff in the past was done simply out of boredom.
In the last sixty years, there has been an alarming decline in food quality and a decrease in a wide variety of nutritionally essential minerals and nutraceutical compounds in imperative fruits, vegetables, and food crops. Th...
I'd like to see the actual quote/numbers. "Averaged 130mpw" in most cases turns out to be "up to 130 mpw" and gets repeated so many times that people take it as the gospel word.
How about not second guessing something everyone says and maybe show a bit of humility? You're not the only one who knows something about running.
How about reading what i actually wrote rather than trying to contort it into something its not?. But you cannot do that can you? You just want a fight and I'm not taking the bait. I stand by my straitforward comment.
What I posted is exactly what goes on here with respect to training information such as "130 miles per week". Everything becomes bigger than reality. The proof is the title of this thread. The OP cited Bill Rodgers logs as proof of his premise....only Rodgers actual logs said differently. Just because what Bill did seems hard to you doesn't mean its out of the ordinary to his peers. Understand?
I'm older now, so I can't do quite the mileage I did in my 30s, but I just cracked open my 2018 log. These are mileage totals and some of my tougher workouts. I ended up with 4900 miles for the year. (I'm amazed by people who are hitting north of 5000; even with blocks like this, it only takes a little bit of injury or illness to take the annual total way down.)
105
105
115
100
126
101
121 (including a hilly 26-mile progression in 2:38)
122
101
110 (with a half marathon race effort)
124 (w/ a 32-minute 10k tempo)
113 (w/ a 55-minute 10-mile tempo)
100 (w/ 20 miles in 1:55 solo)
I'm with you. I peaked out at around 4600 one year and that was a lot. Can't imagine much more than that.
I’m not contesting that people ran 130 mpw or more, but rather that they were running all hard. In the Rodgers training log you provided, he uses the word “slow” repeatedly. 4300 miles calculated to 83 mpw and Mantz runs far more than that.
Most of those 130 (or more) miles were not hard. The miles were not always really slow either, though some were, but were nearly all at very manageable efforts.
This is it. Read about the training guys like Ron Hill and Brendan Foster were doing back then. It was a probably something like an hour per week of marathon pace effort and the rest just a lot of steady running.
I'm older now, so I can't do quite the mileage I did in my 30s, but I just cracked open my 2018 log. These are mileage totals and some of my tougher workouts. I ended up with 4900 miles for the year. (I'm amazed by people who are hitting north of 5000; even with blocks like this, it only takes a little bit of injury or illness to take the annual total way down.)
105
105
115
100
126
101
121 (including a hilly 26-mile progression in 2:38)
122
101
110 (with a half marathon race effort)
124 (w/ a 32-minute 10k tempo)
113 (w/ a 55-minute 10-mile tempo)
100 (w/ 20 miles in 1:55 solo)
This is what a real training log looks like. Bump it up a little bit. Drop down. Bump again, drop it down again. Repeat, wash and rinse. And if you're really an "800 dude" thats really impressive!
No anger my man and apologies if I came across that way. Just been here for a bit and pretty sure we've gone back and forth a few times over the years. My mistake on the CC championship call and you're right - WSU has never won one, but they did win track his Senior Year? Maybe even multiple years when he was there?
Glad you got to meet him. Great guy. 8:38ish steepler in the early to mid 70s @ WSU. Thought he was AA but you would know better than me. Definitely a notable body type. Tall, bigger-boned power runner that stood out. He's a HS starter now and when I'm at a meet he's officiating, I'll ask the kids, "One of the officials is a 2-mile state champ, which one is it?" They never get it right :-)
None of these corrected facts ^^^ were the point of my post. 150 miles a week with Sundays off in the summer. That, for better or worse, is the truth.
Most of those 130 (or more) miles were not hard. The miles were not always really slow either, though some were, but were nearly all at very manageable efforts.
This is it. Read about the training guys like Ron Hill and Brendan Foster were doing back then. It was a probably something like an hour per week of marathon pace effort and the rest just a lot of steady running.
Look at how many of them tested their limits by running triples. Today's runners don't want to try doubles because it doubles their laundry? Serious.
This post was edited 4 minutes after it was posted.
No anger my man and apologies if I came across that way. Just been here for a bit and pretty sure we've gone back and forth a few times over the years. My mistake on the CC championship call and you're right - WSU has never won one, but they did win track his Senior Year? Maybe even multiple years when he was there?
Glad you got to meet him. Great guy. 8:38ish steepler in the early to mid 70s @ WSU. Thought he was AA but you would know better than me. Definitely a notable body type. Tall, bigger-boned power runner that stood out. He's a HS starter now and when I'm at a meet he's officiating, I'll ask the kids, "One of the officials is a 2-mile state champ, which one is it?" They never get it right :-)
None of these corrected facts ^^^ were the point of my post. 150 miles a week with Sundays off in the summer. That, for better or worse, is the truth.
We're all good.
I remember Fleet from his high school times. 8:53. The California kids seem unreal to me. But then again perfect weather helped a lot.
WSU was top 5 every year and finished 2nd once. Thats pretty study to be that consistent. I think the lingering aura from Gerry Lindgren helped a lot. The Kenyans had not yet arrived.
How about not second guessing something everyone says and maybe show a bit of humility? You're not the only one who knows something about running.
How about reading what i actually wrote rather than trying to contort it into something its not?. But you cannot do that can you? You just want a fight and I'm not taking the bait. I stand by my straitforward comment.
What I posted is exactly what goes on here with respect to training information such as "130 miles per week". Everything becomes bigger than reality. The proof is the title of this thread. The OP cited Bill Rodgers logs as proof of his premise....only Rodgers actual logs said differently. Just because what Bill did seems hard to you doesn't mean its out of the ordinary to his peers. Understand?
I did read what you wrote, and it was nothing but discrediting and dismissive. You go on about how financial incentive was the reason for Bedford and Hermens stopping running. Bedford was the world record holder for 10,000m, you think he just stopped because of the income? Same with Jos, he was able to make a living being an agent. Their careers ended because of injuries, so I also stand by my 'straightforward' comment.
What Bill Rodgers did 'Was' out of the ordinary. His coach Bill Squires even told him all that extra mileage wasn't useful, but Bill believed otherwise. The point of this thread is that running that high mileage for so long without breaking down is kind of unbelievable, so I get why the OP posed the question. I'm not trying to start a fight with anyone, it just irks me when people are having meaningful contributions to the thread and then someone acts like they know better than everyone and tries to discredit what they're saying without any other reason that to try to make themselves appear wiser than everyone else, showing nothing but narcisism.
How about reading what i actually wrote rather than trying to contort it into something its not?. But you cannot do that can you? You just want a fight and I'm not taking the bait. I stand by my straitforward comment.
What I posted is exactly what goes on here with respect to training information such as "130 miles per week". Everything becomes bigger than reality. The proof is the title of this thread. The OP cited Bill Rodgers logs as proof of his premise....only Rodgers actual logs said differently. Just because what Bill did seems hard to you doesn't mean its out of the ordinary to his peers. Understand?
I did read what you wrote, and it was nothing but discrediting and dismissive. You go on about how financial incentive was the reason for Bedford and Hermens stopping running. Bedford was the world record holder for 10,000m, you think he just stopped because of the income? Same with Jos, he was able to make a living being an agent. Their careers ended because of injuries, so I also stand by my 'straightforward' comment.
What Bill Rodgers did 'Was' out of the ordinary. His coach Bill Squires even told him all that extra mileage wasn't useful, but Bill believed otherwise. The point of this thread is that running that high mileage for so long without breaking down is kind of unbelievable, so I get why the OP posed the question. I'm not trying to start a fight with anyone, it just irks me when people are having meaningful contributions to the thread and then someone acts like they know better than everyone and tries to discredit what they're saying without any other reason that to try to make themselves appear wiser than everyone else, showing nothing but narcisism.
You've dug in so deep that the only thing left for you is gratuitous personal insults. Bravo.
I've been reliably told (and seen the running logs) guys back in the 70's and 80's ran 5-6000 miles a year. No real time off, raced 20 times a year, poor diets in general, little to no fueling during races, and never ended up overtrained. How is that possible?
Rogers was 5'9" 130lbs*, Shorter 5'10" 134lbs. That helps, plus it was self selecting: anyone who got injured easily/frequently in those days probably quit soon enough due to lack of monetary incentives and less effective injury treatment, whereas nowadays someone might stick with it longer (e.g. Brazier, JI).
*When Rogers was in his early 40s i ended up next to him at the end of a charity race, i was shocked at how slight he was, wouldn't surprise me if he was 125lbs.
Not sure if he’s been mentioned but noake’s “lore of running” has a section about running history, and details a few guys who did this. Worth buying and reading, but my thought reading is a lot of it had to do with natural talent and not going over the edge. Once guys went ocer the edge, they could never come back (see salazar)