JIM RYUNS STORY!!!! 5:30 MILE TO 4:10 MILE

Ryan was my hero growing up! He is a big part of what got me into running (kansas boy)..

KevinM wrote:

I can't vouch for whether or not he was a drill sargeant, but Coach Timmons was most definitely a Marine.

Yes, not in the manner of his coaching though.

Timmons had a steadfast and yet kind and soft spoken manner.

Yes it had to be his way, but you wanted to do it because you knew this was all for the good. And you knew Timmons could take you to where you wanted to be.

You seem to be fairly opinionated on the matter and have insight to Ryun's life that his son does not. Care to shed your anonymity?

No, sorry.

his last name is spelled RYUN.

sheister wrote:

I can't beleive how many of you are trying to ignore the obvious inconsistency in Ryuns career, that he ran much better at 19 than he did in his mid-twenties, which runs against modern thoughts on peak age.

Maybe Ryun did peak at 19, but I hope the people who are purporting this are prepared to conceed that under that logic we have seen the best of one Alan Webb!

People are not robots... Not everyone has the same fire and determination at 25 than they do at 19... Moreover, injuries and illness can and do hamper athletes and Ryun peaked at 19. His peak was very close to his "ultimate potential" because he friggn' ran a WR. I suppose you'd be happier if he had a long career, but never approached 3:51. It is very possible that his training was the NECESSARY ingredient that made him the fastest miler in the world and if he altered that training, he might have a longer career running 3:55. This argument is like saying because we don't like ElG's training, he didn't reach his "ultimate potential" and therefore his coach isn't good. RIDICULOUS.

Living in the past wrote:

Actually, in another thread a few months ago I ripped Moore as a writer for being too touchy feely in that Laase Viren article for Sports Illustrated back in the 1970s. I've also pointed out that the last American runner from Oregon to make an Olympic final was Paul Geis, way the hell back in 1976. I've also pointed out that not many runners from Oregon have run well past the age of 25, at least under Dellinger. Ken Martin is an exception. This has nothing to do with Oregon or Bowerman. Someone else on this thread mentioned Bowerman. I think it was HRE.

Yes. I mentioned Bowerman.

Shortly before he died I actually talked with Lydiard about Ryun and his shorter than expected career and as you might guess, Arthur's comments were almost identical to yours, though he never mentioned Timmons by name. Essentially he thought that Ryun was done in by the same problem that does in most promising young Americans; too much trackwork early on and an insufficient amount of aerobic development to continue improvement into their "mature" years. Of course this was Arthur's standard take on anything.

So here's the thing on the Ryun-Timmons relationship. There probably weren't many high school coaches in the US in those days who would even have envisioned having a high school kid run under 4:00, (remember Bannister's run was only a decade earlier) let alone actually know how to get him there. So you've got to credit Timmons for that in a major way. But you also have to consider that the knife cuts both ways, so if Timmons got Ryun to the WR at 19, you have to consider that he was also responsible to some degree for what happened from age 20 on. How? I don't know, but you can't credit a coach for successes and absolve him of blame for failures or vice versa.

But you also have to allow that people change and what mattered to them at 18 may not matter very much at 21. Cerutty, who incidentally never seems to get blamed for Herb Elliott's early retirement, blamed Elliott's sex drive for finishing his career. Certainly, you'd have to think that starting a family took away from Ryun's focus on running.

not that it matters... wrote:

People are not robots... Not everyone has the same fire and determination at 25 than they do at 19... Moreover, injuries and illness can and do hamper athletes and Ryun peaked at 19. His peak was very close to his "ultimate potential" because he friggn' ran a WR. I suppose you'd be happier if he had a long career, but never approached 3:51. It is very possible that his training was the NECESSARY ingredient that made him the fastest miler in the world and if he altered that training, he might have a longer career running 3:55. This argument is like saying because we don't like ElG's training, he didn't reach his "ultimate potential" and therefore his coach isn't good. RIDICULOUS.

Becasue he ran a wrold record does not neccesarily mean he was close to his ultimate potential. Your reading things into my statement that aren't there, I do like Ryuns training, I have read his book and find nothing in it to diminish timmons rep as a coach.

But conventional wisdom suggests middle distance runners will normally peak around the ages of 25, 26, 27... this was not the case for Ryun. As has been pointed out he did go on to run close to his best at that age, not consistently, and not in the same dominant fashion he once had.

Now of course there are valid arguements to suggest Ryuns age 19 performances might be his ultimate potential, his physical maturity, very hard training, settled lifestyle, great coach etc are things which all came together a lot younger for him than others...

But, you cannot dismiss the chance that with a more reasoned long term approach to his training, development and mental intensity, that may have seen him running continuously through 68-76.. may have resulted in obviously increased longeivity but also quicker PR's

This sounds suspiciously like the book the Olympian to me...I think we have copyright infringement on our hands.

Thanks for your post, HRE. It's reassuring to know that my take on Ryun is consistent with Lydiard's. You're right that Timmons deserves credit for Ryun's early success. But the regimen Ryun was subjected to in high school probably undermined his motivation later on.

It would be great if Jim Ryun himself could appear on this thread and weigh in on his experience Timmons. But I could see why he might not want to give his true opinion in public.

As for Cerutty and Elliott, that's a whole other story of course. I suspect that Elliott got closer to his potential than Ryun ever did. Remember that long thread a few months ago about Cerutty versus Lydiard? I came down heavily on the side of Lydiard.

(By the way, I meant earlier that Paul Geis was the last American from the U of Oregon to make an Olympic track final, in 1976. Obviously, Salazar was in the marathon in 1984. But in that case, making the team was tantamount to making the final. I was referring to runners actually going through the heats. In any case, it doesn't really pertain to this thread. I just brought it up in response to the guy who said that I was an Oregon lover.)

Since I know Jim and Timmie pretty well I think I can speak as Drew has to what was going on with Ryun after 1967. Ryun and Timmons had a falling out in 1968. It was due to a number of things and I believe much of the blame lies with Timmons because of his his way or the highway attitude. In essence Ryun had lost faith in Timmons during that period.

After Mexico City a number of things happened. First the media berated him for losing to Keino. Most of you are too young to remember that America believed that Ryun was a lock for gold. Track and Field was a major sport then and Ryun's loss brought a lot of criticism his way. Jim got married and that's a big change in a 21 year old's life. I think the disappointment of Mexico City, is poor relationship with Timmons and his marriage led to the wheels coming off in 1969.

Ryun laid out for about a year. When he wanted to get serious again about running he went back to Timmons. He ran the third fastest mile in history, only behind his two world records, just before the Munich Games. Physically he was just as formidable as he was in 1967... but certainly not mentally.

Being an Oregon lover is probably not the worst thing you can be accused of. In that vein, I don't know if you've read the Bowerman bio. But near the end, Kenny Moore ruminates about why Bowerman only coached one athelte to an Olympic gold medal and, making a long speculation short, he suggests that the conservative approach Bowerman took, i.e. the emphasis on regular easy days and his belief that it's better to undertrain a guy rather than overtrain him, kept his distance runners from getting to the level where they could win Olympic gold medals. But Moore also speculates that the conservative approach Bowerman took also extended the careers of his athletes. He asks whether the length of, say, Henry Marsh's career was compensation for the absence of a big games gold. Maybe Timmons just played out the other side of the coin. If anyone knows Archie san Romani and can get him to a computer, it would be fascinating to get his take on each coach.

What type of training did Jim do in his base period? Did he still do faster repeats while doing 100mile weeks?

I have a much higher regard for Bowerman than for Dellinger. After all, very few of Dellinger's athletes improved beyond the age of 25 (although Ken Martin is an exception). It says a lot when the high school two-mile record holder transfers away from Oregon after his freshman year (Jeff Nelson).

As for Henry Marsh, he ran for Brigham Young. Maybe he moved to Eugene later.

I haven't read Kenny Moore's latest book, because I think he's a crummy writer. The articles I've read are too abstract and philosophical. As for longevity versus success, I think Moore creates a false comparison. It's obviously better for a miler to stay healthy and make incremental yearly progress up to the age of 26 than to train recklessly at the ages of 17 and 18. Bowerman and Lydiard understood that. Timmons evidently did not.

I don't think Ryun had a base period. He did hard intervals and long, hard runs throughout the year. When he spent that summer on the Timmons farm, he did more interval workouts than continuous runs at subthreshold.

Living in the Past wrote:

I haven't read Kenny Moore's latest book, because I think he's a crummy writer. The articles I've read are too abstract and philosophical..

It's not the writer that's crummy, the writer is BRILLIANT!

What is it about Moore that makes him a brilliant writer?

[

People are not robots... Not everyone has the same fire and determination at 25 than they do at 19... Moreover, injuries and illness can and do hamper athletes and Ryun peaked at 19. His peak was very close to his "ultimate potential" because he friggn' ran a WR. I suppose you'd be happier if he had a long career, but never approached 3:51. It is very possible that his training was the NECESSARY ingredient that made him the fastest miler in the world and if he altered that training, he might have a longer career running 3:55. This argument is like saying because we don't like ElG's training, he didn't reach his "ultimate potential" and therefore his coach isn't good. RIDICULOUS.[/quote]

AGREED! I set my pr in the mile when I was barely 20. It was 4:04. Due to injuries and later 'life' getting in the way, I never improved on that mile time; even though I continued to run seriously for the next 10 years. So, be the parameters of all these 'arm chair coaches'; I was burned out and peaked too early.

Sorry guys, it's not always that simple or cut and dried.

btw, when Ryun set his final wr in the mile at 3:51.1....he led the entire race, and came by the 1/2 in close to 2 minutes....with a pacer and more even pace, he could have easily run 3:49 on that day.....8 years before Walker.

past living,

Because of the reoccuring rest intervals and time spent running you would be able to run at a little FASTER pace than you would during a sustained runas opposed to doing a sustained run, yet still training AEROBICALLY (which is absolutely crucial). In addition, you benefit from the neuromuscular aspect of the slightly faster speed. Im not saying that doing a sustained run wouldn't be beneficial but don't knock the threshold intervals.

Why should an armchair coach give a flip about a 4:04 miler like you? If your real coach was mediocre and put his own career ahead of yours, no one really gives a damn. Ryun's talent makes his true fans lament the fact that he was faster at 19 than at 25.

Red Eye. Are you stoned?