I've been reliably told (and seen the running logs) guys back in the 70's and 80's ran 5-6000 miles a year. No real time off, raced 20 times a year, poor diets in general, little to no fueling during races, and never ended up overtrained. How is that possible?
I've been reliably told (and seen the running logs) guys back in the 70's and 80's ran 5-6000 miles a year. No real time off, raced 20 times a year, poor diets in general, little to no fueling during races, and never ended up overtrained. How is that possible?
I've been reliably told (and seen the running logs) guys back in the 70's and 80's ran 5-6000 miles a year. No real time off, raced 20 times a year, poor diets in general, little to no fueling during races, and never ended up overtrained. How is that possible?
In the U.S., that person has never existed.
What specifically is wrong, or at least exaggerated, about their approach back then? Like I said, we've all seen the logs from their training. Very few miles slower than 6 minute pace, lots of miles. I'm genuinely curious.
What specifically is wrong, or at least exaggerated, about their approach back then? Like I said, we've all seen the logs from their training. Very few miles slower than 6 minute pace, lots of miles. I'm genuinely curious.
Can you link to an example? I don’t think Shorter or Rodgers trained at 6:00 pace. Even if they did, it wouldn’t have been a hard for them. Lydiard was popular then and he believed that easy over-distance could never be too slow.
Rodgers would have been one of the highest mileage runners of the era, not typical. There are guys who put in 6k+ mile years today, but just don't have Rodgers talent. Training principles around recovery haven't changed. Those who couldn't figure out recovery ran slow then just like now. But when you average 130 mpw - 100 can be a down week - you recover running a 100 mile week (other weeks are around 140). If you average 180 mpw, 130 could be a down week, etc.
And I'm asking because I really am interested to know what allowed people to not just stay healthy with this training, but race well too.
I’m not contesting that people ran 130 mpw or more, but rather that they were running it all hard. In the Rodgers training log you provided, he uses the word “slow” repeatedly. 4300 miles calculated to 83 mpw and Mantz runs far more than that.
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And I'm asking because I really am interested to know what allowed people to not just stay healthy with this training, but race well too.
I’m not contesting that people ran 130 mpw or more, but rather that they were running all hard. In the Rodgers training log you provided, he uses the word “slow” repeatedly. 4300 miles calculated to 83 mpw and Mantz runs far more than that.
Most of those 130 (or more) miles were not hard. The miles were not always really slow either, though some were, but were nearly all at very manageable efforts.
1. Running was truly blue collar and hardscrabble back in those days. Most athletes came from working class backgrounds and were not the progeny of country club suburbanites. There was a tougher work ethic already baked in from watching their parents and grandparents toil to put food on the table.
2. Lydiard was the basis of all training. Run a lot of miles, do some strength and speed, go race. No one was worried about heart rate, Zone 2, threshold, cross training, etc.
3. You succeeded as a runner by age 24, or you quit. Winners and record holders were celebrated. There was no feting of local heroes, age group winners, also rans, inspirational stories, and the like.
4. There was virtually no money in the sport. Some under the table cash, plane tickets, a few pairs of free shoes were the best that you could hope for. Athletes did it for the love of the sport and to be recognized as a great champion. Today, if a post-collegiate runner gets some gear and a small stipend, they swagger about calling themselves a professional runner. Back in the day, you won a marathon and then went back to your job on Monday morning. Rodgers didn't make much until he opened a shoe store and created his own clothing company.
5. Depending on your point-of-view, the shoes were better or were absolute crap. The Altra Escalante or the New Balance Minimus would be considered plush by 1970s and 1980s standards. Shoes were designed for athletes, not chunky people in midlife crisis. One school of thought is that those hard soled shoes strengthened feet, joints, legs, and built greater bone density than today's bouncy house footwear. They also enforced efficient running form. You got better and more resilient or you wrecked yourself.
6. The crap diet of that time was probably more nutritious than our highly processed convenience-based foods today. Fresh fruits and vegetables were cheap and more widely consumed. People consumed more water and milk back then.
7. Athletes and coaches labored mostly in isolation. You might hear rumors or see a magazine article that Finns were doing something new, that Japanese were running insane mileage, or that East Germans were hitting the weights hard, but you trusted your process and took that into race day. You were not bombarded with Internet rumors, studies of recreational runners getting better results with HIIT, or self-appointed charlatan coaches claiming that their system produced better results with half the workload.
8. Life was simpler. Run, eat, work, run some more, eat some more, sleep. No mindless scrolling, social media posting, video games, online porn, streaming, binge watching, and such. This left more energy and time to pursue excellence.
I am actually writing a book right now - 25 pages in - on this very thing. I hope to publish it on kindle.
From my own personal experience I noticed that when I was running 160 mile week that I naturally took 2 days off per week. So essentially I was training in 2-3 day cycles. This kept me from over training. Without ever doing the math until recently, I just realized that to get 160 miles in a week with 2 days off I had to be averaging 32 miles a day (doing doubles). That kind of shocked me - and I was the one doing it. Most people, especially on this board, do not believe me when I try to give advice on here because they don't believe my claims (of high mileage, improvement when I lowered my mileage to 25-40 miles a week, etc.)
I once tried to run 3 times per week and took no days off - getting up to 212 miles in one week...and it fried me.
So my lesson/realization is I have to take days off. Then I also realized that when I was running low mileage I did the same thing - took days off. At one point I was taking 3 days off running per week. For about one year I set all my PR's doing this.
However, I could never replicate that one magical season. I think I may have finally figured out why...and that is part of the purpose of the book - to share what I learned. If you are interested I will link the book once finished. I hope it helps.
to answer your question though I don't think many runners where:
1) running fast all the time - 6;00 pace is not fast for top runners - but I think you can run a lot of your mileage a good pace as long as you are recovering. So that is really the key.
Modern food has lost 40% of it's nutrients in the last 50 years--and that's assuming you eat the good stuff, not ultra processed.
A small part is people didn't track their miles as accurately. It wasn't practical to know the exact distance so people didn't care. My college teammates said X Loop was 16 miles. When I run it now with GPS it is more like 14.7.
There also wasn't that much else to do. Lots of stuff in the past was done simply out of boredom.
I imagine the high volume dudes back in the day weren't ripping track reps or even big threshold workouts that often. Most of it was probably just steady running, not a lot getting faster than mid 5's, a ton of it in the 6-7 minute range. You can get fast in the marathon just running massive mileage around 6-7 minute pace with some 5k-10k races thrown in the mix every now and then as your speed work. That's not the ideal way to train, but it'll get you far.
I am actually writing a book right now - 25 pages in - on this very thing. I hope to publish it on kindle.
From my own personal experience I noticed that when I was running 160 mile week that I naturally took 2 days off per week. So essentially I was training in 2-3 day cycles. This kept me from over training. Without ever doing the math until recently, I just realized that to get 160 miles in a week with 2 days off I had to be averaging 32 miles a day (doing doubles). That kind of shocked me - and I was the one doing it. Most people, especially on this board, do not believe me when I try to give advice on here because they don't believe my claims (of high mileage, improvement when I lowered my mileage to 25-40 miles a week, etc.)
I once tried to run 3 times per week and took no days off - getting up to 212 miles in one week...and it fried me.
So my lesson/realization is I have to take days off. Then I also realized that when I was running low mileage I did the same thing - took days off. At one point I was taking 3 days off running per week. For about one year I set all my PR's doing this.
However, I could never replicate that one magical season. I think I may have finally figured out why...and that is part of the purpose of the book - to share what I learned. If you are interested I will link the book once finished. I hope it helps.
to answer your question though I don't think many runners where:
1) running fast all the time - 6;00 pace is not fast for top runners - but I think you can run a lot of your mileage a good pace as long as you are recovering. So that is really the key.
Your book should be titled “What not to do- training for lunatics”.
I've been reliably told (and seen the running logs) guys back in the 70's and 80's ran 5-6000 miles a year. No real time off, raced 20 times a year, poor diets in general, little to no fueling during races, and never ended up overtrained. How is that possible?
They didn't have GPS back then, so they just rounded up. Yeah I know, you measured the route with your car odometer sometimes, but admit it, back then, everyone rounded up a little bit. 100mpw in 1970 is the equivalent of about 83mpw in 2026.
Also, a lot of times they may have been doing "reverse badger miles", that is, using time watch time to measure distance, and assuming they were going about 7:00 mile pace the whole way.