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

drewr wrote:

I was there and you weren't-you're a troll, so we can ignore you.

Oh so because I was there and have the highest regard for Bob Timmons that upsets you.

Well you weren't there, and you wouldn't even be here if it weren't for Bob Timmons.

For you and your family to diss Timmons for all that he is given to all of you is unconscionable.

drewr wrote:

And I forgot to add-since I mentioned it in an earlier post, if you go to ryunrunning.com, click on Photos at the bottom. Scroll down and you'll see dad running solo in a USA jersey. That was his infamous mile against the lights during his ITA days (I think run in Boise, but I could be wrong). You can see them on the inside of the track.

I looked at the pics......does anyone know what meet that was with the guy that has a hat on??? Who is the guy??? Am I just way out of the loop or was it odd to have a hot on in the race???

That was his infamous mile against the lights during his ITA days (I think run in Boise, but I could be wrong).

You might be right, but it looks like the track at Idaho State.

I don't know. 50x440 in 69 as an aerobic workout? Maybe. But that's essentially 13 miles at 4:36 pace. That's pretty hard running. Snell would do something like 20 quarters at a comparable pace with a quarter recovery.

Anyway, I wasn't making any conclusions about Ryun's training when I mentioned what Arthur said. I just thought that Living in the Past and maybe other readers would be interested in seeing that Living isn't the only guy who sees Ryun's career as he does.

As to "Bowerman and the Men of Oregon," I really liked it. Living in the Past, I know what you mean about the way Moore writes and there have been articles he's written where I feel like it's more about him than his subject. But I don't see much of that at all in the Bowerman book, though Kenny certainly appears in it frequently. Yet, the book is about Bowerman and the athletes he coached.

For you and your family to diss Timmons for all that he is given to all of you is unconscionable.

I'm pretty sure he didn't diss Timmons. Jerk.

Drew,

Would you have any objection to my adding this log to my own website:

http://www.bunnhill.com/BobHodge/

Bob-go for it. I think that's great.

Oletimer-thanks for the correction!

Michael-We were quicker than dad over short distances, but I think a lot of people forget he ran 21.5 on a relay split in high school and 46.9 on the mile relay his freshman year in college. I think Ned managed a 22.5 200 and a 48.6 400. I was 23 and 49.0. It's always intrigued me. Ned and I had 4.5 40 speed. Dad never had that kind of quick speed. Dad's was a wind-up kind of speed that once he hit it, he was rolling. That's why his range was so fantastic-21.5 all the way up to 13:38 for 5k (when the WR was less than 20 seconds faster)

Other PRs-Ned ran 2:59 for 3/4s, I ran 3:02. Ned ran 1:51 for 800, I was 1:53 high. Needless to say, we were no Jim Ryuns. Ned did win state his senior year in the mile in 4:19 and was third in 800 in 1:55 high. The two of us laugh about it all the time as we were running maybe 20-30 miles a week. I was just getting over mono, so my times were not that great our senior year. I split 1:57 high on a two mile relay.

In regard to the "50x440" workout on Wednesday in his jr yr of hs (p. 6? of this thread):

I could be wrong, but am pretty sure that that was reported by Cordner Nelson (in The Jim Ryun Story) as *40*x440--four sets of 10--and wonder whether listing the first set at 20 was a misprint/mistype/misrecord.

As with a great many swim workouts, Timmy's track workouts typically have a real symmetry to them. (They're very aesthetically--if not physically!--pleasing that way.) My impression is that it would be very unusual for Timmy to have a set of 20, set of 10, set of 10, set of 10--four or five sets of 10 would be much more his style.

In any case, even 40 reps--10 miles of quarters--is still a mighty workout. And they were "on 3:00" (to use swim terminology), so that was still two hours of quarters--not counting warmup, cooldown, and work between sets. Easily a three-hour-plus workout in toto.

Note: I know running the quarters on 3:00 bothers some people--that seems like a lot of rest for quarters at a pace that was just "high-aerobic" for Ryun. But bear in mind that this was a team workout. Timmy had large squads, and it would have taken some of his guys more than 90 seconds to run these. "On 3:00" was a way to give the slower kids a decent recovery before starting the next rep. (Also, Timmons typically recorded every rep for every kid--it takes a little while just jotting that many times down, before the next rep begins!)

jtupper wrote:

Granted it would have been nice to look at 5:00 pace or 4:36 because economy usually gets worse with faster speeds. However, many 800/1500 runners we later tested (guys who did a fair bit of faster running, like Boit, Barbosa and Cruz) actually had equal or better economy down under 5:00 pace than they did at 6:00 and slower -- opposite was true for the 10k and marathon types.

Yes, I figure Ryun might have been more economical at some of the faster speeds, especially around 69 440y pace, since he apparently did large volumes of running at that pace in single workouts. Not surprising Cruz had excellent economy at faster speeds, either. I'm guessing his was very good at 4:20 pace or maybe even faster.

HRE. Thanks again for your latest post. I always enjoy reading what you have to say. I'm sure you're correct that Kenny Moore has different writing styles. I just never liked what I saw.

Now, here's something for the guys who said that Lydiard criticized Timmons only out of jealousy because Ryun beat Peter Snell in 1965. You guys apparently don't know that at the time of that race Snell and Lydiard were not even on speaking terms and that Lydiard is the one who was angry.

Snell had given an interview for Sports Illustrated in which he said that, while he listened to Lydiard's advice, he basically always trained the way that he, Peter Snell, wanted to. He snubbed Lydiard. Talk about ingratitude!

So in 1965, Snell was coaching himself and not running as well as he had the previous year. I'm sure that Lydiard wasn't too upset when the ingrate was shown up by the prodigy. Also, Lydiard made his comments about Ryun when Lydiard was near the end of his life. I'm sure Lydiard was speaking from his heart, not out of some petty jealousy of Bob Timmons. One thing you can say for sure about Arthur Lydiard is that he had absolutely no reason to be jealous of the accomplishments of another track coach.

I enjoyed the Bowerman and the men of oregon book, by Moore. The early chapters bog down a bit...I really don't care about his lineage and relatives who settled in the west, but when you get past that, it flows well.

That week of training that had the total of 50X440 was what Timmons gave me -- he had typed that up along with all the others I presented (and many more i have that I hesitate to re-type)< His team typically did 40X440 and the way he kept track of each kid's average was to have a goal that each was shooting for, and after each 440, each runner would keep track to himself -- that's 1 under my goal, that's still 1 under (if the next was at goal), that's goal (if the 3rd was 1 over goal, etc. Then at the end of the workout all would line up and report how many seconds over or under they were in total. If you had a minus 5 that was good; if +12, not so good, etc. When I asked if all of the team did this he once told me, "Yes, but one guy often would stop after 34 or 35, and I always doubted if he would be any good." I don't know how he turned out

Living in the past wrote:

One thing you can say for sure about Arthur Lydiard is that he had absolutely no reason to be jealous of the accomplishments of another track coach.

Lydiard was well thought of as a coach, but he was also quite petty. I heard him criticize other coaches and yet he had no clue what they were doing. They were just being successful, and Lydiard didn't like that at all.

It is funny he gave Carlos Lopes as example to not use interval training, him being the Olympic Champion in the marathon. However Lopes ran repetitions twice a week throughout his long and successful career, Olympic Champion and record holder at age 37, and a WR marathon at age 38.

If that's true about Lydiard, then it certainly does make me think less of him. And you say you heard it yourself. I have no reason to doubt what you say. Thanks for weighing in here with your own direct knowledge of Lydiard, as painful as it may be for some of his fans like me to read.

"I was there",

You mentioned earlier that you would give anything to be able to go back & run for Timmons. Which sounds like you were at WE, but didn't run. However you obviously have been a serious runner at some point since then. Also you mentioned something about the park having rolling hills. The area to the West, North & South of the school is pancake flat... even the biggest hill within 3 miles of the school is nothing much. How "rolling" could it be? Regardless of the course, 20x 880 in 2:45 for a 1:49y, sub 4 guy is easy. (was it 2:45 send offs?)

Hey, Charlie; remember our senior year, in '72, when they held Sunflower League track meet at KU, in conjunction with a KU/SIU dual meet and Jim Ryun ran 3 races, as fast workouts? That was pretty neat!

And later in mid August, when they had that Pre Olympic track meet at KU for Ryun to run? (I ran the 880 in that one. I remember Powlas in the mile. Did you run that one before heading off to Warrensburg?)

The converstaion with Arthur about Ryun didn't start with ryun at all. We were talking about the whole matter of all the great young runners the US produces who never seem to realize the potential they show as high school or collegiate runners. He attributed that to the over emphasis US coaches place on interval work and an underemphasis on aerobic development, then added that he thought that was the reason Jim Ryun never ran well consistently after the age of 20. There was no mention of Timmons at all, or of any other coach. I'd have a hard time attributing any jealousy or pettiness to his comments. They were made more than thirty years after Ryun and Snell had passed from the scene and after all, it was HIS guy who had the Olympic golds.

Arthur did basically divide the world into good coaches who trained athletes similarly to the way he did and inferior ones who over did the interval work. When we last talked, he was very complimentary towards Ernst van Aaken and slightly dismissive of Igloi.

The thing is, it's difficult for a coach to make anything other than complimentary remarks about what another coach does without it being taken as jealousy or pettiness. All of which sort of drifts away from the subject of Jim Ryun's later career and why it wasn't as impressive as his early one. There were, even in Ryun's prime, people who thought that he was being worked too hard and would burn out before he ever reached his "full potential," whatever that may have been. Arthur's view, amonth before he died, was simply in line, to some degree, with that thinking.

what u say sounds about right from everything I have heard and read.

there was a keen rivalry between Igloi's camp and Lydiard's guys in the early to mid 60s.

Each coach can point to his 'shining examples' to tout his program. It is an argument/discussion that will never end....lol....