The HENRY RONO Base of Yore

Henry Rono was a generational talent.

I think stay constant. I remember listening to a podcast where Nick Willis said his training looks something like a 1:1 ratio of weeks of just mileage and strides and weeks of regular workouts. Though I don’t remember how long ago this was.

I think the common ideology of a long buildup is pretty solid for most people but I also think people get too bogged down in the science aspect of it

My Kenyan buddy has run a 61 half and 27:55 10km. When not racing during months Nov-Feb he too runs 15-20km twice daily around 7:15-7:30 pace. Many Kenyans do this in the off season.

Do not bother trying to copy how Henry Rono trained. There are men racing today, racing much faster than Rono raced 3000m to 10000m. There are scientists who study the effects of short term and long term at elevation on human body. There are scientists who study altitude sickness, acute and chronic altitude sickness on human body. There are scientists who study resistance to acute and chronic altitude sickness. There are genes possessed by those resistant to altitude sickness. Those living at higher elevations at or near Mt. Kilimanjaro, those from Nepal and those at higher elevations in South America are most resistant to altitude sickness. It is more interesting to seek answers regarding those from Nepal and those from S. America and their lack of great running ability than to discuss how Ethiopians and Kenyans train. Some Ethiopians and some Kenyans run 75 miles per week slowly. Some Ethiopians and some Kenyans run 75 miles per week quickly. Some Ethiopians and some Kenyans run 145 miles per week slowly and some run 145 miles per week, not slowly. Many Ethiopians & Kenyans race 5000m, sub-13:15. Many Ethiopians and Kenyans race 10000m, sub-27:30 Many Ethiopians and many Kenyans race Marathon, sub-2:10. A combination of a runner's build, decent weather year around and genetic resistance to altitude sickness seems to be the answer.

UhDUHHHHHHH wrote:

I’ve read in some if the archived threads that Henry Rono would hammer solid workouts almost every other day and race frequently, but BEFORE he did this, he would spend 4 months simply running: 15km in the AM, 15km in the PM. Every day. And he ran quite slowly on these runs.

Conventional wisdom tells me that running a ton of miles really slowly for 4 months will make me a “long slow runner”. If one were to do this (not the exact 15k/15k, but similar) I know you’d need to keep in strides and maybe unstructured / unplanned tempos, but what else would one need in order to keep this long base productive? Would elements of training need to progress throughout this period? Or could they stay fairly constant?

In the years I was in touch with Henry he did none of that stuff when he was in his distance phase. He just did slow mileage until he was ready for his hills and track work. There was once a long thread here where Henry was documenting his training when he was trying to come back and get the over 50 mile WR. You might want to look for it.

Would you classify this training as classic Lydiard periodization?

approaching geezerdom? wrote:

Would you classify this training as classic Lydiard periodization?

Arthur once said he had nothing to teach Kenyans so maybe that's a stretch. But in his autobiography Henry wrote that he got the idea for training slowly from watching what Lasse Viren did when Viren was training in Kenya. If Viren got the idea for that from Rolf Haikkola (I am not even trying to spell that correctly) and Haikkola got it from Lydiard there could be a connection. There are similarities but I have no idea if Henry knew who Arthur was.

For a while Henry was living near and pals with a friend of mine who was a 2;15 marathoner. Henry was always coming by my friend's place looking to run with him and my friend would usually hide and not answer the door because he just couldn't stand to run as slowly as Henry did.

How did the attempt for the 50 mile WR go? Or was it an attempt for a mile for someone over 50? If the attempt was unsuccessful or never happened how much use is the documentation of his training?

If your friend was a decent, modest guy, that's funny. If he was something less than that, then it's REALLY funny (kinda at his expense)!!

He's as decent and modest a guy as you'd ever know but he had no use for running slowly.

It was for the mile and group record. He never got close. If you're interested in seeing what he did it's useful.