Yeah, i've heard all about how good mead was and have read of their brutally fast times that year. But what i want to know is, how were these boys training. How much mileage did they run? how many two - a - days did they do? what was their standard weekly mileage totals?
I'll give you a quick bump in the hopes that Rob Aubrey will read this and respond.
I ran with those boys at the U of O in the mid '90's. I'll let you answer your own question. Here are the hints.
Pat Tyson was their coach... in case you didn't know he was Pre's room mate in College and the STONGEST U of O supporter known in the world. All the boys except Sky Ditre went to the U of O. How do you think Mr. Tyson prepared them for the transition to the college world? Think about it. Shouldn't your question be what kind of milage did the U of O team run?
tell me about Skiy.
I remember being a freshman/sophmore in HS and my coach giving me the TandF lists and seeing Micah and Skiy .05 apart in both the 1600 and 3200. Something like 4:07 and 8:58. I never heard about that guy again.
Micah I remember being a pretty good steepler- 8:40ish. Did he not live up to his HS potential? Or was it more the case of a very good (but not great) talent working with a great coach in HS?
I give you a quick bump and hope Matt Davis reads this and tells you.
I hope someone will go more into depth with helping me out and telling me their mileage and weekly totals and how many 2-a-days they had. Yes I imagine they ran maybe 70 - 90 miles a week to run those times...but i don't want to guess i want facts :). By the way...anyone have any pictures of what these boys looked like, or any group pictures of the races or the top 7 together from this 1993 team?
who gives a sh*t, these kids were good because they had a good coach who knew what he was doing. like you said they probably ran 70-90 miles a week, because that is what it takes to run fast. they were probably no different than any other good high school team that did real mileage with some talented kids.
yeH wrote:
I give you a quick bump and hope Matt Davis reads this and tells you.
aubrey hangs out here as well...
Yupp, I know what your saying they were just high school kids who wanted to run fast and they put in the work. Good stuff
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i guess...a lot of 2 - a days and track workouts
I didn't join the Mead program until 1994 (Micah and Skiy were still around) but I don't think the program changed much between 1993 and my stint (aside from graduating the bulk of the talent).
During the school year, I would say the base program was around 50-75mpw with doubles every weekday (20 minute light morning run before school) and a long run (hour to hour:30) on Sundays. The way I understood it, Tyson was getting a lot of workout hand-me-downs from Dellinger and tailoring them to HS kids -- basically giving versions of the workouts that HS kids could successfully complete. That's always been one of Tyson's strengths -- fitting a workout to a kid so he feels deserved success upon completion.
I still have all the workout sheets that were posted in the locker room each week (Tyson would bind them with results and newspaper articles at the end of the season for a cool keepsake). Here's an example week from the very start of the season (Aug 28-Sep 3 1995, school not yet in session so no morning run):
Monday: 50 minute fartlek (Indian file run or whatever)
Tuesday: 40-50 minute regular run
Wednesday: 6x800m loops on grass in a park + 12x100m grass strides
Thursday: 40-50 minute regular run
Friday: 30 minutes of Oregon Drill
Saturday: Tempo 30 minutes with a buddy
Sunday: 1 hour easy.
And a week from mid season (Oct 9-15)
Monday: AM light 20 minutes, PM 3M fartlek with 10 minute warmup and 10 minute cooldown.
Tuesday: AM light 20 minutes, PM 30 minute run +12x100m grass strides
Wednesday: AM light 20 minutes, PM 3m race dual meet
Thursday: AM light 20 minutes, PM 40-50 minute run
Friday: AM light 20 minutes, PM easy 30 minutes
Saturday: Race simulation. 10-15 min warmup, then 1600-800-800-1600 hard over home course. 10-15 min cooldown + 12x100m grass strides.
Sunday: Easy one hour.
Also, nearly every day features about 3-5 minutes of guts and 50 pushups.
These workouts were from 1995 -- the entire 1993 team had graduated, but we still had decent talent (ended up something like #13 in USA according to the venerated Harrier rankings). Hope that helps. Maybe Matt or Rob will chime in with how things were different a couple years earlier.
Hope this helps, sorry for being long winded. This is one of the few running related topics where I actually have something of potential value to contribute. about ...
Matt Davis posts here?
Skiy ended up going to school in Montana (MSU I think) but I don't believe he ran there all 4 years. I think he ran unattached for a while (I saw him running at a Stanford meet post 1997), but since then he has joined the military, and last I heard he was jumping out of airplanes over Afghanistan.
I don't know for sure, but I thought I saw him post once. I guess I just assumed since someone said it above. I would be surprised to find out he spent much time here at all ...
Can you explain what the Oregon Drill is?
Thanks.
Yeah, sorry about that. The way we ran it, it was basically just continuous grass strides (frequently done barefoot, if you want).
So as I recall, you basically are doing back and forth grass strides of 50-100 meters between cones (I forget how far, exactly) .... First stride is regular run pace (then 10-15 seconds jog), next stride is 3mile race pace (then 10-15 seconds jog), third stride starts at race pace and accelerates to an all out sprint (then 10-15 seconds jog). A single person can do them all in the same line, but since our teams frequently had 100+ participants, we would set three stations side by side by side (one for each of the 3 stride types) to accomodate so many bodies.
Hope that helps.
regular run pace
O ------------------------------------------ O
3m race pace
O ------------------------------------------ O rest area
3m pace accelate to sprint
O ------------------------------------------ O
I'm guessing the Oregon drill is either similar to the Michigan, where the Oregon workout would start with a fast 1200 on the track, a short recovery jog, then a distance run on the roads at LT pace and finishing with a fast 1200 on the track. The Oregon drill was a 10 mile road run, my high school coach shortened that to 3-5.
Or perhaps its a variation of the old 30/40 drill. That was my favorite workout. My hs coach did mile repeats instead of 2 miles.
The system Dellinger ran in the late 70's early 80's was adapted by many.
Both my coaches in HS and college borrowed strictly from two coaches-Dellinger and a little Harry Groves who was big time when Dellinger had his powerhouse.
However, concerning mileage totals, Tyson was obviously a master motivater if he could convince entire teams to do more than 60 miles a week. My hs coach won 3 state titles and he never pushed that. If you can get a team of guys to do that at the high school level you'll dominate.
very cool...
thanks.
bump