as I talk to and listen to elite athletes and their coaches, it becomes iincreasingly obvious ass to why the U.S is not competitive. We have very few coaches that understand distance
development. ZERO at the college level. I believe that JK as a handle on the situation and the Hanson program. The problem is that both of these are trying to do it with level 2 guys.
What, in a nutshell, are you talking about. What do american distance runners do to much of, or too less of?
Too much intensity? Too much LSD? Not enough?
I have often wondered how american training differs from European training, but really havent done much research.
My impression, is Europeans train harder and more intense.
My experience based on various Europeans who trained in Phoenix in the mid-80's to early 90's [including Markus Ryffel ('84 OG 5000 silver medalist), Dietmar Millonig, Stephane Franke, Dieter Baumann (yes, he's now discredited, but from what I saw, he trained smart)] is that they trained a lot like what JK talks about... very little anaerobic repetition work, and a lot of high end aerobic stuff. Their fartlek runs were very rhythmic, with "float" sections at a fast road pace and "hard" sections that appeared to be right around LT pace, or slightly faster. Their sprint work was usually very short - 200's or shorter. Sound familiar? Read 'Summer of Malmo' or JK.
At various occasions (they weren't necessarliy in town concurrently) some European elite runner would say to my coach, "your runners train too hard," or "Americans train too hard." I think they were referring to our cultural propensity to hammer out anaerobic stuff, like repeat 400's, year-round.
I hear a lot about "Summer of Malmo", anyone have a link?