An excerpt of the interview: Would Coe have relished the opportunity to have a triple in one year to aim for? Coe: Yeah. Yes because I love competition. Training was what I did to compete. Competition was what I woke up in the morning for. Competition was what I woke up for on the first day of a new year. I wasn’t sitting there getting excited about, you know, 120 miles a week on the road and tons of steel in the gym. I mean, that’s what I had to do to be the best I could be in competition. So it’s competitions that excite athletes and if they’re not excited about about the competitions then they’re probably not going to be the ones that are making those judgments anyway.
The belief that his success was on low mileage brought in the 90s debacle of “quality over quantity.” The 90s was the dark ages of European/American running and this false belief was a major cause. Maybe he feels bad about that and now wants everyone to believe he was lydiard high mileage runner like all the other greats.
An excerpt of the interview: Would Coe have relished the opportunity to have a triple in one year to aim for? Coe: Yeah. Yes because I love competition. Training was what I did to compete. Competition was what I woke up in the morning for. Competition was what I woke up for on the first day of a new year. I wasn’t sitting there getting excited about, you know, 120 miles a week on the road and tons of steel in the gym. I mean, that’s what I had to do to be the best I could be in competition. So it’s competitions that excite athletes and if they’re not excited about about the competitions then they’re probably not going to be the ones that are making those judgments anyway.
Just arrived from IAAF G.P. Final in Montecarlo, I read various discussions about athletics in different sites. I'm the coach of many top athletes, the most part are kenyans (Saaeed Shaheen now in Qatar, Paul Kosgei World HM...
This discrepancy depend on a different way to consider the weekly mileage. When I speak about 150 M per week (really I speak about 250 km, for me is easier), I put in the amount everything : warm up and warm down, very slow run, short sprints uphill, km. run with specific exercises, ecc. Instead, for ex., Peter Coe consider only THE QUANTITY OF KM RUN AT SPECIFIC SPEED. Really, Coe was able running also 220 km a week, if we consider everything. Once, in 1987, Seb was in Italian Centre of Tirrenia, and I followed him in a long run of 30 km with the car of the Centre, at 3'40" - 3'20" pace, and the day after he went for a very tough session of weights.
If you have ever watched the documentary Seb Coe Brn to run that completely contradicts what his coach/father Peter Coe said about training. He believed in developing a runner though quality not quantity training.
Can somebody ever get an in depth interview with Coe where he talks about the discrepancies of his supposed mileage over the years.
ROJO, JG, please make this happen. He is not dead, nor a hermit. There is no reason for this to be so mysterious.
About a decade ago I was in a UK interview with Coe, where the late Dave Sunderland did the interview and about 30 coaches attended. Coe was really open, free of all the BS and ego that is so often displayed. He dealt with the mileage thing albeit noone banged on about it. If I recall, he reckoned something like 70 to 80 over the autumn to spring and maybe 30pc lower in summer, and yes incl warm ups and recovery stuff etc. It seemed clear that whether a 7 day mileage total said 64 or 78 wasn't a big deal to him, if indeed he added it up. In his first autobiography he says something about a hard 10 miler on loughborough in 45 mins, so imo anyone picking into his long distance minutiae as it's publicly available is wasting time.
After acidosis diagnosis in early 1980's, P Coe and S Coe knew S Coe could not tolerate more and more weekly workouts. 1982 & 1983, a new S Coe. No longer a guy training as if he were a 600m specialist. S Coe gradually increased his mileage 1984 to 1989. S Coe's 400 and 800 personal bests were accomplished while a low mileage guy.
Can somebody ever get an in depth interview with Coe where he talks about the discrepancies of his supposed mileage over the years.
ROJO, JG, please make this happen. He is not dead, nor a hermit. There is no reason for this to be so mysterious.
About a decade ago I was in a UK interview with Coe, where the late Dave Sunderland did the interview and about 30 coaches attended. Coe was really open, free of all the BS and ego that is so often displayed. He dealt with the mileage thing albeit noone banged on about it. If I recall, he reckoned something like 70 to 80 over the autumn to spring and maybe 30pc lower in summer, and yes incl warm ups and recovery stuff etc. It seemed clear that whether a 7 day mileage total said 64 or 78 wasn't a big deal to him, if indeed he added it up. In his first autobiography he says something about a hard 10 miler on loughborough in 45 mins, so imo anyone picking into his long distance minutiae as it's publicly available is wasting time.
Agreed...a case study of tiresome Gotcha! journalism and pointless amateur "research."
Coe as an athlete: "We run about 30 miles a week, not too much volume all quality"
Coe now: "I ran 150 mpw and was a part time pro bodybuilder, I trained every moment of the day"
The 30mpw was in a specific tapering phase right before big comps. Rest of the year was like 60-80 in most things I have seen. You know low mileage compared to the 110 guys but we are still talking decent volume.
If you look around you can find both Steve Scott (higher mileage) and Jim Spiveys(low mileage guy) logs that are pretty complete.
You definitely need mileage but there is definitely a decline in benefits above 60-80 for a lot of people. But pretty much everyone gets huge benefits from going to 30 to 60.
There are enough elite guys like Spivey, Lagat, tanner who claim to be running 60-70mpw. I doubt they are all lying. There can be confusion (I ran 700mpw for 10 weeks. 70mpw while in reality if was 6 at 90 and 6 at 50) which is why you need those logs.
I believe they changed the training significantly after the 1978 Europeans...
S Coe changed 800m race tactic post 1978 European Championship. Never again in a championship 800m race did S Coe split first 400m sub-50 again.
What made S Coe unique was his 46.xx/1:41.xx 400/800 speed.
Is it possible to race sub-3:30 1500m while grinding one self into hamburger logging 120 miles per week? Yes. One-hundred-twenty miles per week guys have no chance of winning international 1500m races if 1200m is split slower than 3:03