In this week's episode, following a review of the London Marathon, Matt and Oli welcomed Renato Canova to the podcast (14:40). Canova, who truly is marathon coaching royalty, spoke in this first part about the development of...
Calling that in an interview is stretching it a lot. It was a lecture, but an interesting one. It's amazing that his key insight is one that will be ignored: if you're training for the marathon and running 90-100 mpw, and your competitors are running 160-180mpw, then why would you expect to beat them? Do all of these people just think they're outliers who can be great on lower mileage?
He's completely right. So many people are quick to point to "East African genetics" or doping for the failure of Western marathoners, but it's more likely that the African runners are simply working harder.
Calling that in an interview is stretching it a lot. It was a lecture, but an interesting one. It's amazing that his key insight is one that will be ignored: if you're training for the marathon and running 90-100 mpw, and your competitors are running 160-180mpw, then why would you expect to beat them? Do all of these people just think they're outliers who can be great on lower mileage?
He's completely right. So many people are quick to point to "East African genetics" or doping for the failure of Western marathoners, but it's more likely that the African runners are simply working harder.
Are American runners just not willing to do that amount of work?
Calling that in an interview is stretching it a lot. It was a lecture, but an interesting one. It's amazing that his key insight is one that will be ignored: if you're training for the marathon and running 90-100 mpw, and your competitors are running 160-180mpw, then why would you expect to beat them? Do all of these people just think they're outliers who can be great on lower mileage?
He's completely right. So many people are quick to point to "East African genetics" or doping for the failure of Western marathoners, but it's more likely that the African runners are simply working harder.
Are American runners just not willing to do that amount of work?
Cam Levins does that sort of mileage and has run 2:05. Though he's Canadian, but that's more or less the same thing, right?
I think it's probably more that Americans are doing the amount of work they need to and no more. American distance runners make their money from sponsorship so it doesn't really matter if they win races, they just need to do OK on the global stage and be competitive domestically. African runners don't get anything like the sponsorship that Americans get. So African runners make their money from placing at road races. To do that, they need to be better than everyone else and that only comes from putting in the work. So, both Americans and Africans are doing what they need to to make a living.
Calling that in an interview is stretching it a lot. It was a lecture, but an interesting one. It's amazing that his key insight is one that will be ignored: if you're training for the marathon and running 90-100 mpw, and your competitors are running 160-180mpw, then why would you expect to beat them? Do all of these people just think they're outliers who can be great on lower mileage?
He's completely right. So many people are quick to point to "East African genetics" or doping for the failure of Western marathoners, but it's more likely that the African runners are simply working harder.
Are American runners just not willing to do that amount of work?
Could it also maybe be a factor of learning to "work hard" (i.e have high intensity) and the type of training learned through the NCAA, which for me seems to favor short term gains over long term development.
No, but the second part comes out next Sunday and he'll be talking about Cairess' training so he might draw comparisons with some of his other athletes who are in a similar range. He does like to throw in a lot of names and comparisons when he's talking, which is why he's so interesting. Other coaches talk in general terms about workouts, paces, etc, but so few ever say "this is what (e.g.) Rupp did in training, X weeks out from his race, this is how he performed, and this is how he improved next year." Canova gives you all that. He's not secretive at all, which makes him so much more believable as a coach.