Jack Foster's training

longjack wrote:

foster in a nutshell.

he was a cyclists and sportsman in his youth and had a "natural" aerobic base.

he took up running late.

he was not exactly a low mileage guy,

he ran 5 minute pace ish for an hour or so every day, 6 days a week. that was up and down hills killing it at times.

and he cycled one day a hundred miles hard.

and he was active during the day.

he did track work outs once in a while and ran cross country.

at the end of the day, you are talking the equivalent of 100 miles per week all quality.

You just imagined a ton of that post out of thin air. Yes, Foster sometimes cycled instead of running his recovery. No, that was not consistently 100 miles hard.

Yes, he often ran fast. No, that does not mean five-minute miles regularly. See page 2 of this thread: "Aug. 1-20 miles on road, 2:03" or 16plus miles in 1:30.... Good, fast running, but closer to 6:00pace than 5:00.

Yes, the hills look like they were often enormous. Yes, lots of xc racing. Still not the equivalent of 100 miles a week, when the whole point was that he ran however far and fast (or short and slow) as he felt like on the day. If we were trying to emulate his program, automatically running 100 weeks would not be the way to do it.

Considering all the training he did on soft surfaces, gotta wonder how he did so well in road races- both in performance and not getting injured.

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not quite imagined.

it is distilled down with the essentials of a peak foster.

i ran junior cross in auckland champs, got third, met jack way back in 1977..

the nutshell schedule of jack is a recollection from conversations with arch jelley and i forget who else.

the idea of 6 minutes per mile as a general pace marker is wacked out.

gonna stick with most of the miles at 5 ish minutes per mile.

.

Wow. What a trip to discover this thread I started 15 years ago.

Hope everyone is doing well.

Check out this gem of a film I discovered tonight.

https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/on-the-run-1979

Maybe you conflated John Walker's training? He was notorious for lots of 5-minute pace.

BPD wrote:

Wow. What a trip to discover this thread I started 15 years ago.

Hope everyone is doing well.

Check out this gem of a film I discovered tonight.

https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/on-the-run-1979

Derek Turnbull (Riverton) trained identical to Jack Foster = by the seat of his pants.

Another who trained in that manner was Ron Clarke. 1 hour hard around Melbourne Hippodrome (horse racing track). These were family men working full time jobs. Efficiency of training was essential.

Could Jack have beaten Norris Wyatt over steeplechase?

Yeah i just read a couple of articles about Derek. Dam impressive what he was able to accomplish.

If anyone watched that film I linked, the end is hilarious. Jack bombing dow a slope screaming at the top of his lungs.

Norris Waytt? You almost have to be a Kiwi with a few years under your belt to know that name.

HRE wrote:

Norris Waytt? You almost have to be a Kiwi with a few years under your belt to know that name.

Shameless (or shameful) name dropping on my part. However, Jack had plenty of opportunities to jump fences over that farmland he trained on. Plus his victories at Skellerup Steeple (those barriers were huge) suggest he could have challenged Norris for Waikato steeplechase title on occasion.

It's a good point about Jack and the steeple. And Wyatt would have been running in his era yet, at least the earlier bits.