Fast guys who train/trained unconventionally

Emil Zapotek had some less than traditional training methods

"Zatopek would fill his bathtub with dirty clothes and water and run on top of the clothes to slip in some extra training. He experimented running in combat boots, with his wife strapped to his back and even with a gas mask to make breathing difficult." as per ND MileSplit

The Ingebrigtsen's training was fairly unconventional until everyone started doing it.

Canova's "Special Block" was seen as mad until just about every marathoner incorporated it to some degree into their marathon build.

Though not so unconventional at the time, The Australian marathoners - Rob de Castella and Steve Moneghetti - did what would be considered odd marathon training by today's standards. They ran 200kms a week (not strange), but they did 3 workouts; none of which totalled more than 20 minutes (including recoveries). Despite this, they managed to run 2:07 and 2:08 marathons in the 80s.

Parker Valby

lots of college runners and younger pros have been incorporating pool training. Anna hall and Britton Wilson have both shown some of the pool workouts they do. Fred Kerley also does pool workouts.

Parker Valby, as mentioned above apparently does enough pool training to compensate for 20mpw so she must be amphibious at this point with the amount of time she must be spending in the water

cade flatt

Bruce tulloh

Mo-Th Intervalls or TT 1h after work

Fr off

Sa Race or TT

Sun long run

Always ran barefoot

European 5k champion

Cheptegei training on a untreated grass track with roots and holes in it

I don't remember his name, but this guy from Edmonton did stair repeats in 31 seconds during his buildup to the 'Thon.

"Cheptegei...runs his “track” workouts on a worn path in a grass field that’s 406 meters long, egg-shaped, and features 5 meters of elevation change."

We had a guy in our club, not going to name him, who got married and had a son when he was quite young. In what was like a movie scene, he woke up one day to find a note from his wife saying she was really sorry but just couldn't do "this," be a wife and mum, and was gone.

Now he's a single dad but pretty solid runner and didn't want to quit. So he would put his son to sleep every night, wait a little while to make sure he really was out, then run two miles up the street in ten minutes and back home again in another ten. On Sundays his ex-in laws would take the kid for a couple hours and he'd run a twenty. He got a 2:27 marathon out of that and once hung with Bill Rodgers to the very late bits of thirty km.

Colleen Quigley said after he run the other night that nobody else in the track world was training as she does. Lots of biking?

I remember you posting this a couple years ago (I think...). Super inspiring stuff.

yes, but also no?

if i had to guess how a guy with a 1:46 800m but a 17 minute 5k trained, i'd probably come up with roughly what he was actually doing, lol

It might have been more than a couple years but maybe not. I lost track of him when I left the club and DC area. But many years later found a story about him in "Ultrarunning" Magazine. He'd become pretty decent at Ultras.

I've heard John Walker did some pretty unconventional training later in his career when dealing with compartment syndrome. Basically what I remember was he could only run for a certain amount of time so basically all runs were some form of hilly session to get the most out of the limited time on feet. This was past his Olympic and sub 3:50 peak but he kept racking up sub 4s.

He had Compartment Syndrome, I think that's what it's called and couldn't run for more than half an hour at a time. So he found a road with a two and a half mile long hill. He'd run up it at about a six minute pace. His coach would be at the top with his car and drove him back to the bottom. He'd run up it again at the same pace and be done.

Kevin Castille.

No one would want to copy his training method... or the circumstances that forced him to train that way.

Thanks for confirming! Also found the thread where I read that which also has info on his more traditional Lydiard training before his hand was forced to do 30 minutes up the West Coast road into the Waitakere mountains and then hitch a ride with Coach Jelley (who is apparently still alive at 100 years old if Wikipedia is to be believed!). A certain unregistered HRE dropped some knowledge almost 20 years ago.