Kim McDonald training

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Sounds like you are honestly looking for information which is commendable, and unfortunately rare. Really the only information I can give you training-wise is that when those guys were down in Melbourne in the winter Kennedy dabbled with 130 mpw but spent the bulk of his time closer to 90-110. Not a whole lot of track sessions, mainly tempo runs. He would jump into some of the Australian track races and still manage 13:20ish performances off the strength work.

As far as the drugs thing goes, know that is not the case. Ask people that actually know the sport (as opposed to those who subscribe to the "they ran fast so they're on drugs" dogma) and you will find that the most suspicious athlete believes the KIM group, and the majority of Kenyans in general, to be clean. For instance, Jon Brown who has been perhaps the most outspoken against cheating and has not been bashful in naming names was recently quoted to the effect of, "by and large the Africans are clean." Would like to keep this training-focused but had to defend the integrity of the KIM group. A partner in that enterprise, Tom Ratcliffe, is now doing great things leading the Kimbia group (Tegenkamp, Rutto, Maiyo, etc.).

Agree with the KIM and Kimbia clean aspect. I know Tommy Rat well, and he would never be involved in drugs. Went to kIM's Kenyan camp in 2000 and saw no evidence of any drugs whatsoever. IAAF testers came as well.

Of course you wouldn't see any signs of people using drugs. Do you honestly think they would make that noticable? You guys need to wake up. Kim McDonald is as dirty as they come. When the walls come crashing down on him you will see.

what are u smokin wrote:

Kim McDonald is as dirty as they come. When the walls come crashing down on him you will see.

A bit late for that, isn't it?

What's the statute of limitations?

Billy Beer wrote:

A bit late for that, isn't it?

Here is Bob's Schedule

Monday

AM 6 miles easy

PM Hard 15k Road Run (5:05, 5:15, 4:59, 5:12, 4:19, 5:08, 5:25, 4:51, 5:10) Total time: 47:12

Tuesday

AM 7 miles at 6:00 pace

PM 6 miles at 6:00 pace

Wednesday

AM 5 miles at 6:00 pace

PM 3 miles warmup, 5 x 800m (2:08, 2;07, 2:06, 2:02, 2:04) 1:40 rest between each. 2 miles warmdown

Thursday

AM 6 miles at 6:00 pace

PM 7 miles at 6:00 pace

Friday

AM 5 miles at 6:00 pace

PM 5 miles at 6:00 pace

Saturday

AM 2 miles easy

PM RacCross Country Training

Wyclif (John) wrote:

What's the statute of limitations?

Billy Beer wrote:

A bit late for that, isn't it?

I'll bite, but only because I believe in the sincerity of the original post. I can only speak to what I was exposed to during the 2+ yrs of training with the KIM group.

Kim's training was not "rocket science". The base phase(Sept-Jan) consisted of a buildup of MILEAGE. First and foremost Mileage. I remember a half joking Kim once responding to a question about weight training, with the answer of " If you have enough energy to lift weights, you probably aren't doing enough mileage." The first six weeks or so was build up, then the next few weeks workouts were added in. None of the base phase workouts were overly structured. Two per week at the begining, moving to 3x per week about late november/december. Most weeks, one workout would be Fartlek in nature and one more tempo/steady state. These workouts were time based, ie 3x 3 min,2 min,1 min or 2x 15min hard. Nothing really distance based, I assume this was to keep us from getting to stressed about certain times over particular distances. I was training for 5k, and my milage got up to 100/week in the early season. Nothing crazy! Long runs once per week that increased in length over the months that capped out at 2 hours. That is really it. Sept-Jan the group was spread out all over the world. Some of the group may have recieved different schedules, but my guess is that it was pretty close.

Jan to Apr( Australia and Palo Alto) things got more intense. 3 workouts per week were the norm. With one on the track starting about Feb. Things began to be more structured and intense. The milage actually increased at this time, 100-110/ week, moving up to 120 for 5k types. I believe my largest and longest stretch of mileage was 6 weeks ave of 120 around April or so. The workouts are all the pyramid, sets of 400's, ladders that have been documented in other articles. One technique that I believe was unique to Kim was the "Secret Workout". This was done about once a month. All we knew was what time we had to be warmed up and ready at the track. Kim would only tell us each interval at a time, and it was always brutal. Example: All out 2k( ~5:05 - 5:10) full rest 1k hard, 4x400m then roll around and puke on the track! I would consider that the whole base season. Once May/June rolled around, it began to be more racing and fine tuning.

Kim's training was not far from John McDonell's at Arkansas. Just more mileage, less racing, and higher intensity. The group was also key! The fact that most of the year, you were training with 15 or so true world class runners at distances from 800m to 10,000m greatly influenced the results.

Two side notes:

I believe that if core/strength training had been more of a focus in Kim's training, there would have been less injuries and longer careers. But, I pose this question. Would you take the career of a Noah Ngeny or Daniel Komen, or one of 3rd and 4th place finishes with no world records over a longer period? Something to think about.

As for drugs. It angers me to even have to comment on this topic, but it is a reality of our sport. In the almost 3 years I trained with KIM, literally living with the group, I never saw anything that would make me believe that the performances achieved by the athletes were influenced by anything other than very hard training, smart decisions, and luck.

Hope this is helpful,

Ryan Wilson

I'll bite, but only because I believe in the sincerity of the original post. I can only speak to what I was exposed to during the 2+ yrs of training with the KIM group.

Kim's training was not "rocket science". The base phase(Sept-Jan) consisted of a buildup of MILEAGE. First and foremost Mileage. I remember a half joking Kim once responding to a question about weight training, with the answer of " If you have enough energy to lift weights, you probably aren't doing enough mileage." The first six weeks or so was build up, then the next few weeks workouts were added in. None of the base phase workouts were overly structured. Two per week at the begining, moving to 3x per week about late november/december. Most weeks, one workout would be Fartlek in nature and one more tempo/steady state. These workouts were time based, ie 3x 3 min,2 min,1 min or 2x 15min hard. Nothing really distance based, I assume this was to keep us from getting to stressed about certain times over particular distances. I was training for 5k, and my milage got up to 100/week in the early season. Nothing crazy! Long runs once per week that increased in length over the months that capped out at 2 hours. That is really it. Sept-Jan the group was spread out all over the world. Some of the group may have recieved different schedules, but my guess is that it was pretty close.

Jan to Apr( Australia and Palo Alto) things got more intense. 3 workouts per week were the norm. With one on the track starting about Feb. Things began to be more structured and intense. The milage actually increased at this time, 100-110/ week, moving up to 120 for 5k types. I believe my largest and longest stretch of mileage was 6 weeks ave of 120 around April or so. The workouts are all the pyramid, sets of 400's, ladders that have been documented in other articles. One technique that I believe was unique to Kim was the "Secret Workout". This was done about once a month. All we knew was what time we had to be warmed up and ready at the track. Kim would only tell us each interval at a time, and it was always brutal. Example: All out 2k( ~5:05 - 5:10) full rest 1k hard, 4x400m then roll around and puke on the track! I would consider that the whole base season. Once May/June rolled around, it began to be more racing and fine tuning.

Kim's training was not far from John McDonell's at Arkansas. Just more mileage, less racing, and higher intensity. The group was also key! The fact that most of the year, you were training with 15 or so true world class runners at distances from 800m to 10,000m greatly influenced the results.

Two side notes:

I believe that if core/strength training had been more of a focus in Kim's training, there would have been less injuries and longer careers. But, I pose this question. Would you take the career of a Noah Ngeny or Daniel Komen, or one of 3rd and 4th place finishes with no world records over a longer period? Something to think about.

As for drugs. It angers me to even have to comment on this topic, but it is a reality of our sport. In the almost 3 years I trained with KIM, literally living with the group, I never saw anything that would make me believe that the performances achieved by the athletes were influenced by anything other than very hard training, smart decisions, and luck.

Hope this is helpful,

Ryan Wilson

Sorry for the double post. Shows how fluent I am on message boards.

Ryan Wilson wrote:

Sorry for the double post. Shows how fluent I am on message boards.

no worries. awesome post!

I didn't spend as much time as Ryan did around the group, but I too never had any doubts that these guys were clean (well maybe the Kenyans could have showered a little more often, but apart from that). They worked incredibly hard, but they also rested just as hard in between work outs. Kim was never a big believer in altitude training and even mentioned to me one day that he was trying to keep Noah away from Kenya as much as possible to try prove a point (I know that he was born there and the benefits you get from that, but I am just quoting what he said).

I was never a great athlete, but Kim was always willing to help me and answer any questions that I may have had. It always surprised me that people (here in Australia) never took the advantage going down to the track and watching these great athletes train and ask questions. I knew they were in Melbourne and I just turned up at the same time they were training and asked if it was OK to join in. All I did was made sure I lead a few reps and basically tried to not get in the way of anyone in the other.

Ryan talked about the secret session, I did one of those with the group but my one was more for the 800/1500 guys (Ryan\'s was more for the 1500/5000/steeple guys I guess). We did 1000 (2:18.8) 3min rec 800 (1:56.3) 3 min 4x400m with 60 sec rec (58/58/60/69). Yes that last rep was a 69, my only solas was that William Chirchir was only a stride or two ahead of me in that last rep as well (he ran 2:18.5/1:53.8/ 58-58-58-67ish). I was f***ed afterwards. I also remember doing a session with the group in Palo Alto where Noah ran 3x4x400 with 60sec then 3min all between 55-56sec. That was about 6 weeks before he ran a 3:43 mile (I could only do 4 in the first set then 3 in the second and I only ran the first 200 in each of the last)….again, I was f***ed.

I remember in the winter of 2001 that I increased my mileage from around 60 km per week up to 140-150km in an attempt to be ready for Kim’s group when they came to Melbourne in the summer of 2002. Every time I ran, all I thought about was being fit enough to train every day with his guys and using them to prepare myself to win a medal in the 1500 at the Comm Games later that year (02). Sadly two things happened that year, 1. I got a stress fracture 2. Kim passed away (here in Australia) and his group never returned for their yearly sojourn to Australia.

Ryan,

Thanks for the great information!

Can you give examples of the stable track workouts

that the 1500m group ie Ngeny did during the spring/summer?

Also the period Jan- April they did 1 workout on the track.

What was included for the remaining 2 workouts?

thanks again!

I was in palo alto for the years when K.I.M. trained there. Unbelievable workouts. Martin Keino told me he thought they were too hard sometimes, they left their best running in practice. Anyway, I saw Komen run 6 x 800 in 1:58. I saw a group run 2k, mile, 1200, 800, 400.. 5:05, 4:00, 2:57, 1:56, :55. I also saw plenty of steady repeats, 600s at 1:33, and of course the staple, 1k @ 61.

I am sorry if I sound stupid, but who or what is KIM?

You should also check out Marius Bakken's website:

http://www.mariusbakken.com/index.php?parent=11&groupid=13

Thanks to both Ryan Wilson and JRinaldi. Just what I was looking for guys. A solid thread about the training of one of track and fields greatest coaches.

Anyother information is still greatly appreciated.

twisted logic wrote:

Kimbia

Dieter Hogen, eh?

Not to imply anything negative about the others associated with this group, but as a distance runner, I would involve myself with Hogen (Salazar too) about as quickly as I'd involve myself with Trevor Graham if I was a sprinter.

Maybe Uta Pippig got a bum rap. Maybe Floyd Landis did too. Hell, maybe all the people who flunk tests are really innocent and were sabotaged/took something by mistake/victims of faulty tests/whatever. Who knows? But one drug bust, deserved or not, paints a blemished picture of not only the athlete, but the coach and agent as well.

There's always been quite a bit of suspicion surrounding Gabriele Rosa. I know a couple of runners who participated in the Fila Discovery USA program. Prior to the start of, and during, that program's existence, no Rosa runner had tested positive. If there had been a single one, these American runners said they would have had nothing to do with the program. The whole thing would have looked too fishy and would have cast suspicion on them. During the program, they never encountered any evidence of, or even talk of, drugs. One even mentioned that Rosa told him that altitude tents were a form of cheating. Maybe the entire DUSA program was just a big smokescreen designed to dupe Americans into believing all those Fila Kenyans were really clean after all. But why? That would seem like a pretty big waste of time and resources.

But Hogen (and Salazar) has had an athlete who tested positive. Maybe Pippig was innocent and got railroaded. Or maybe guilty but behind Hogen's back, meaning he's a clean coach unfairly saddled with a dirty athlete. Either way, it's a shame for them, but all some people are going to see is that drug bust, and I wouldn't get within a marathon distance of that situation if I wanted to preserve my own image.

A lot of people would definitely want to let that whole thing die and move on, especially Hogen (and his supporters) if he's innocent. But that's just turning our backs on a huge problem in sports. No way we should be doing that.