John Molvar's 9-weeks-to-100-MPW buildup plan.

Morton wrote:

Get a grip and quit the excuses. Maybe 9 weeks is not ideal, but if you are serious about running, get your mileage up there, ASAP.

Mileage is overrated.

PS Joe Newton's York HS teams go from 0 to 80 to 120 mpw in 8 weeks. Source: How to Coach Cross Country Successfully by Joe Newton. They have been ranked in the top 10 high school teams in more than 25 times. Two of their runners went on to spectacular success after York with Don Sage becoming an NCAA champion and Marius Barken running 13:05 for 5000. Not to beat a dead horse but their are countless examples of individual and programs who routinely ramp up their mileage even fast than I said in the thesis. Again, take your time if you like and debate the core of what Lydiard said which is simply run a lot and run it fast without going anaerobic.

JWM wrote:

PS Joe Newton's York HS teams go from 0 to 80 to 120 mpw in 8 weeks. Source: How to Coach Cross Country Successfully by Joe Newton. They have been ranked in the top 10 high school teams in more than 25 times. Two of their runners went on to spectacular success after York with Don Sage becoming an NCAA champion and Marius Barken running 13:05 for 5000.

What happened to the rest of them? Seriously.

SearchingForFrankSoder wrote:He put his own ideas in and took out others....the hill phase for one.

JWM wrote:

PS Joe Newton's York HS teams go from 0 to 80 to 120 mpw in 8 weeks. Source: How to Coach Cross Country Successfully by Joe Newton. They have been ranked in the top 10 high school teams in more than 25 times. Two of their runners went on to spectacular success after York with Don Sage becoming an NCAA champion and Marius Barken running 13:05 for 5000. Not to beat a dead horse but their are countless examples of individual and programs who routinely ramp up their mileage even fast than I said in the thesis. Again, take your time if you like and debate the core of what Lydiard said which is simply run a lot and run it fast without going anaerobic.

You chose a poor example. Though a few of Newton's runners have had successful post-hs careers, far too many have never been successful after they left York. Were they getting poor coaching in college? Maybe some, but certainly not all of them. The prevailing opinion is that they were burned out by the high mileage they were doing in hs.

I'm just saying that no rule should be applied to everyone because every runner has a different build, history, training speed etc.

And don't bring what I am doing into it, I've only been running a few years and am already doing 3-4 times the mileage from high school a year ago and am struggling to adapt to 60-70 miles a week as it is.

JWM wrote:

Hi folks,

First of all, as I have said 100 times on here the past 10 years since I wrote the thesis...

What was the purpose of this thesis....PH.D, Masters, Level 3 certification?

fleming go wrote:

Mileage is overrated.

Haha, ok.

Don "No Soul" Simmons wrote:

SearchingForFrankSoder wrote:He put his own ideas in and took out others....the hill phase for one.

Give him credit; he lifted that line word for word from Marty Liquori's book.

Who? Molvar?

He wants to debate Lydiard but he leaves out one of the more important parts. Did Liquori leave that out of his book...of which I'm not sure you reference?

Only 5% of high school athletes who ever competed in T&F in high school go on to compete in college. By your definition half of the 5% are not successful in college. So 97.5% of all high school runners "are not successful in college" with the vast majority never even being good enough to even consider in competing in college. I am sure some York people will post and they will tell you that most of their top 20 go on to compete in college. Most of these kids would never had a chance to compete in college they were in your average HS program. If you measure success by how many York grads were good enough to run in college, compared to the typical high school you will find York comes out number 1 here too with close to 100% of his top 20 competing in college compared to 5% at your typical HS.

Newton says he looks for kids who would otherwise be 11 minute 2 milers at your typical 20 mpw HS/15 race per season HS. He gets them down to 9:50 by senior year compared to the 11 minutes they would have run at a typical HS. If you are running 11 minutes, you are not running in college. If you run 9:50, you are running in college. Which is better getting closer to your full potential at a younger age or never getting a chance at all?

SearchingForFrankSoder wrote:

Give him credit; he lifted that line word for word from Marty Liquori's book.

Who? Molvar?

He wants to debate Lydiard but he leaves out one of the more important parts. Did Liquori leave that out of his book...of which I'm not sure you reference?

I wasn't defending Molvar, merely pointing out that he lifted the line "It is this phase of Lydiard’s system which is probably the most controversial and also the most easily dispensed with" comes straight from Marty Liquori’s Guide for the Elite Distance Runner. It may be stupid, but it's not a Molvar original.

Liquori included the hill phase in his book but added "it is the most easily dispensed phase of Lydiard's program". I dispensed it. My reasoning is that since 1980, close to 0% of the top 10 ranked runners in the world every year from 800 on up used his hill phase. To me that is strong evidence but not proof so we can certainly debate the value of it. However, more than 90% of those same ranked runners used the core of Lydiard's principles sans the hill phase to get where they did, whether they knew it or not.

I think a little clarification is needed here on Peter Snell. Mr Molvar is correct in saying that Peter got to 100mpw after 3 weeks BUT that was in 1964 when he was preparing for Tokyo. He did not do that as a raw recruit coming into the Sport. He had been "training" for years with Arthur. I put emphasis on the "training" as HRE rightfully said Peter struggled with the distance work and was actually in tears after his first Waiatarua.

Don't forget he ran a 2:41 marathon back around 1961. You don't do that sort of time on on nothing.

The problem that a lot of people don't get their head around is Arthur did not have everyone running 100mpw or even get everyone to that mileage. He stated he felt it was an optimum mileage to train at , at a good Aerobic pace.

The pundits came along and saw the 100mpw and basically misinterpretation started.

As I have said on these threads before. I never ran 100mpw, Arthur knew that. But I got strong enough after 5 or 6 years of relatively consistent running where I could run my long Sunday runs at 2:40 marathon pace.

I was an 800/1500m runner.

What every successful runner uses in some method or another is a way of building leg power. 800-meter guys need a different way than marathoners but everyone needs it. Any training system that leaves it out is not complete and ignores the basic ideas of the Lydiard system, which is to build all the components and ignore none.

Lydiard had his guys use hills instead of weight training or plyometrics. It developed the same thing.

Correct Don.

I disagree with you in a big way.

First of all Bakken was only at York for one year, hardly a product of Newton's system. Newton takes as many kids as possible and has them run as much as possible to win, not to develop them.

Saying that his 9:50 kids would be 11:00 minute kids elsewhere is hogwash. He does not have a magic formula, some of his 9:50 kids might be 9:30 kids or better with a reasonable training program.

Where are the results at Gordon?

First, I did not say half are not successful in college. Where are you getting that from?

Second, I am not Newton bashing. He is a great coach who gets the most out of his high school runners. Perhaps he leaves little in them for post-hs, but that is not his concern. Whether or not it should be is a separate argument.

Finally, I suspect your suggestion that their top 20 compete in college is optimistic. Perhaps someone closer to the program can provide accurate data, but stories are rampant about York runners giving up running or regressing post-hs. I may be wrong, but there is a boatload of talk suggesting I am not.

My high school's training was EXTREMELY light. The only way any of us was going to burn out was if someone took a flame thrower to us. Yet only three of the distance runners who graduated with me or in the three years before I did went on to run in college and of the three, I was the only one to run past my sophomre year of college, let alone to continue beyond college.

However many York runners have kept on over the years, the percentage still running is much higher than at my old "relaxed" program. I think it's as valid to conclude that the York runners had satisfied their competitive ambitions in high school or found the college programs not challenging enough as it is to say that quit because they'd run so much in high school.

John is 100% correct in pointing out that most high school runners do NOT run after leaving high school. I'd only modify that statement to say that most high school athletes IN GENERAL do not continue with their sport after graduation.

Hi Kim,

Dust of your old copy of Snell's book and go to page 24 and you will indeed see it was 1961 when he took 3 weeks to get to 100 mpw. In '64 he took 2 week!

Pg 168

"I was aiming to reach 100 miles a week as soon as possible. I made it after 2 weeks, training mostly with Barry Magee, an ideal companion because of his ability to maintain a uniform pace and his willingness to increase the pace when I wanted to. Over 10 weeks I logged a total of 1012 miles."

Quote from Lydiard's first book Run to the Top:

Chapter 4 "The Key to Conditioning"

"They key to my conditioning training is one hundred miles a week."

I am sure not everyone in Lydiard's camp was running 100. Not everyone can handle it from a durability standpoint, has the desire or toughness to do it and I am sure like any successful coach Lydiard, recognized that and individualized his approach where necessary.