Lydiard v Cerutty

that's very interesting. I wonder what information passed between those two and Stampfl back then?

As has already been touched on, everyone wants schedules, so Cerutty's eclectic aproach doesn't fit well.

I think another interesting point (and one worth debating) is that Cerutty did not believe in the hard-easy approach. Nowadays, it is heresy to talk about 2 or 3 hard days in a row, yet it is clear that some champions did that very thing. This is where "know your own body" comes into play.

Hmmm

Sorry about the nonsensical sentence. I will repeat it.

Herb recommend quality over quantity and said that it was the quality that made him great - but he did do quantity it would seem.

How can anyone, including Herb himself, really isolate the key ingredient when all elements were covered.

I not sure about the Stampfl connection - I don't think he was a selector.

Joe Henderson told me that Runner's World had organized a speaking tour for Cerutty near the end of his life. Larry Myers was taking him around and an early stop was in the RW offices which were in Palo Alto then.

Cerutty came through the door and Myers was introducing him to Joe. Joe reaches out to shake hands and begins to say, "Pleased to meet you." But before he finished Cerutty glared at Joe's outstretched hand and yelled, "Only homosexuals touch other men!"

I don't know how the rest of the visit went. Lydiard told me that, "Old Perce was a bit of a showman."

Article by Cerutty from RW 1971 vintage:

Runners World Magazine: July, 1971

CERUTTY: JOGGING ISNT ENOUGH

I probably wouldnt be alive today had not my instinct aroused me after a serious breakdown in health when 43-now over 30 years ago. At that time I could hardly walk a mile or jog 100 yards. It took two years before I could jog two miles without a walk or a rest. Eight years later, or six years after conquering two miles... state marathon champion and record holder? It is true.

I have a message. Get it straight. Jogging alone will not save your life if you smoke tobacco, eat without intelligence, have a shockingly bad heart. But take hope. Better to drop dead trying than never attempt at all.

But you won?t drop dead, or probably die before 100 if you take my advice. After all I am alive and am planning 20 or 30 years ahead. I'll tell you a funny one. An interviewer asked me, What are your ambitions for the future They thought I would say, go to the next Olympic Games, write another book, or similar. I said, My ambition is to be divorced for adultery when 95, grabbed by the cops when 104 for attempted rape, let out of jail when 110 for good behavior! A member of our government wrote, Come off it. You won?t live to be 95. You'll be shot by a jealous husband long before that! High praise.

So back to the life save jogging. One of my axioms is, Without knowledge we are clods, without experience we are naive, without emotion we are dead; with all three we can become invicible.

I first sought the knowledge, gained the experience (thousands of miles of running, lifting weights, tramping in the mountains-all after age 43). Actually they had ordered the coffin. I didn?t like the brass knobs and refused to get into it.

We are what we eat, drink and breathe. So for three years after 43 I never ate anything but food found in nature-nothing cooked; only fruits, vegetables and raw eggs. I did not die. Nor need you. Now I eat much more-chicken, meats, cooked vegetables, french fried potatoes cooked in vegetable oil, little else. Oh nearly forgot, ample vino.

Don't just jog.; that is, move like a sleepwalker, a person in a trance, every step the same. No. Come alive! Throw your arms up and outward from you, release those shoulders (and your tensions) yell and shout if you feel like it and no cops are about. Conciously fill your lungs the upper lobes by bringing your shoulders (and arms) up, hunching the shoulders and breathing deeply, or fully. Full lung aeration, or FLA as I call it.

When you have mastered that, try palpitating the navel. Incidentally, all the best males palpitate their navels. Only by this means can you hope to fill the lower lobes and take in the life giving oxygen. After all, we live on oxygen as much as on calories. So skip a bit, do a fast surge, slow down, jog a bit, even walk, but don?t talk. Talkers never get anywhere, really. So ?tis best to jog alone, concentrate, feel you are doing something, getting somewhere not just performing an act because someone said jogging would be good for you. There is far, far more to jogging than just that.

So I repeat, come alive, get really fit. True, your wife may leave you because you are too fit. After all, buddy, you will be in good company because it has happened to me.

We do not have to have heart attacks, strokes, or cancers. If you would live of course there is a price to pay. Manna never did fall from heaven, nor dollars from the sky, nor fitness out of lack of exercise or denatured foods,

Be seeing you in the 2001 Boston marathon? Could be. I'll only be 106!

RW September 1971

WORTH REPEATING:

Percy Cerutty: Women who run 4:40 miles and three hour marathons couldn't do it if they were not born with a masculine skeleton and an excess of male hormones. Rather than be extilled, they are to be pitied as sub-female-just as a male who can't run a five minute mile and lift his body weight overhead must be considered a sub-normal male.

All I will say is that Herb used to take on the good advice and filter out the rest.

Controversial Percy. I would have to agree with his assessment on men. We all should be able to use our physical being with ease as we did as children. Lifestyle choice leads to the loss of this physicality.

As for his assessment on women? Controversial! Does his opinion have any validity?

the buzz wrote:

I remember reading - I think from Herb's autobiography that Herb wanted to run the marathon in Rome but wasn't allowed - so he must have been doing marathon training.

That he wanted to run a marathon doesn´t necessarily mean that he did marathon training in the modern sense. Training for a marathon and what Lydiard called "marathon training" is not exactly the same. We would call the latter "base training".

You also have to remember that the knowledge about proper training for the marathon race was rather undeveloped at the time, so that Herb wanted to run the marathon doesn´t necessarily say anything about his training.

this could be true but i think it's worth looking into. There are the two isolated stories a i heard about Herb and very long running. One is something about a 28 mile run he did once when away with friends 'just for the joy of running' and then there is the 30miler at Portsea he did with Pirie and after the 22 mile mark left Pirie behind easily.

Whatever that may say about marathon potential i don't know. Pirie was 5000 and 10000 but still it's an isolated situation.

What it says about Herb's ability to envisage racing a marathon says a lot. If Herb was like any other person i would query such an opinion. But Herb was a guy who was never beaten. If he wanted to run the marathon it was probably because he could see he could win it. He had the memory of Zatopek of course. If you are Herb Elliot and nobody in the world is even close to you, how would you compare yourself. To the best in history, Zatopek 5,10,marathon treble.

Whether there is any truth to Herb's ability to run an amazing marathon, it would have added a whole new element to the story though wouldn't it?

sim wrote:

What it says about Herb's ability to envisage racing a marathon says a lot. If Herb was like any other person i would query such an opinion. But Herb was a guy who was never beaten.

Sorry to be pedantic but that's not quite true. He was unbeaten over the 1500 and mile, but was beaten on at least two occasions at senior level that are referred to in 'Why Die' - over an 800 or half-mile in the lead-up to the 1958 Games to Brian Hewson, and in a two-mile where he ran second to Albie Thomas who set a WR 8:32 in the race.

not quite... wrote:

That he wanted to run a marathon doesn´t necessarily mean that he did marathon training in the modern sense. Training for a marathon and what Lydiard called "marathon training" is not exactly the same. We would call the latter "base training".

You also have to remember that the knowledge about proper training for the marathon race was rather undeveloped at the time, so that Herb wanted to run the marathon doesn´t necessarily say anything about his training.

true, not necessarily

but are you splitting hairs "base/marathon training"? who is the "we" to which you refer?

From herbs autobiography p95

on a 15 mile run with halberg (1960 5000 m Olympic Gold Medalist) in 1958 just after Herb had run the mile WR and halberg had run a 3.57. they had been trying to run each other into the ground

"Power pulled out...two miles later Halberg stopped, and I was on my own" Herb ran for another 3 miles to make up the 15.

"This modest performance remained unpublicised;yet personally it was as pleasing as my ballyhooed runs, strengthening as it did my secret ambition to be a marathon runner."

I read about the same run in halberg's autobiography (unfortunatley misplaced or on loan somewhere and never returned) and halberg was amazed at herb's stamina.

Halberg not being able to keep up with herb on a 15 mile training run does say something about his training.

Here's the passage from "A Clean Pair of Heels":

After being throw out of a Paris city park, where they were sleeping on the grass... "We decided we had seen enough of Paris anyway. We drove north and finished our interrupted sleep deep in a farmer's field about thirty miles away (eight of them, including Elliott and Halberg, as well as Betty Cuthbert, were travelling thru Europe in a borrowed kombi).

Before we hit Belgium, we decided to have a fifteen mile training run. ... The run developed into quite a torrid battle. Herb and Dave (Power... per Halberg, a runner who has made himself, not a great natural runner) applied the pressure and ran faster and faster. It reached the stage where everyone had had enough, and crawled thankfully into the van - except Herb. He ran several more miles by himself. His natural strength for running was just fantastic."

Thanks stillrunning!

Great stuff. I hope that is not my copy you have there :)

Actually, carries the imprint "the library of Ken Doherty", so all the more special... the vagaries of eBay... It was a really enjoyable read, as others have noted in past threads about Lydiard, Snell, etc., and the bio's from that era.

Bump

Are any of the people who posted on this thread still around? I'm trying to figure out what, "varied pace" running is within Cerutty's week. His guys did it twice a week; the longest on Saturdays. Would this be hiking and running, like a really varied fartlek or would it be actual running for up to 30 miles?

seven 7s wrote:

On the topic of Cerutty, does anyone know of a book that outlines Cerutty's coaching approach?

This guy's blog has a fair bit of info about Cerutty:

HRE wrote:

We have all of these threads looking at the differences between different coahes and their methods but maybe it would be more productive to look at similarities. I think a lot of the perceived differences result from what is emphasized and what is less emphasized in a coach's writing or speaking.

My intention it´s not to comment on Lydiard or Cerutty 2 coaches i respect despite what you might think.

But i can´t stand another your absurd and training misunderstand, there the reason of this my post.

I agree with your idea that the subject might be Lydiard AND Cerutty instead of Lydiard VERSUS Cerutty. Since it´s informative about both methods and doesn´t might be seen as war, a competition or the kind of stupid american idea "what´s the best" kind of Hollywood oscars. I don´t know why in a accurate sport made of victories and chrono results why might be one "best coach".

However as i´m not able to resist to comment your absurd idea that to want to pass, the idea that would be more productive to look for similarities than to look at the differences among coaches. This is an absurd absolutely. Since we all do the same sport, and the training variants are limited it´s obvious that be the training or the coach what would be, most of the training shall be similar.

But to thing that the training similarity is more relevant to define one training kind or one coach methodology is training ignorance, and miss of training sensibility. What defines any kind of training and any coach methodology lies on the difference and training discrimination and not on training similarity. What is similar or equal as no define among the rest.

If today we define Lydiard, Cerrutty, whatsoever training method it´s to what is different and discriminate among what is common to every training method, discriminate from each training coach.

What is real it´s that even a slight difference in between 2 methods is what might take to 2 very different training results, 2 very different training consequences. I got hundred of runner real examples that since the runner did change from one method to another one, just for that reason, he did huge improve or don´t (the improve decays), therefore slightly different training leads to very different training results. Might be you that are not an example from a top class runner but you are a living example of that situation, you did move from one kind of training to another and there you did enhance your results. If what´s relevant among methods would be the similarity obviously you willn´t improve while change from one to another.

The parts from several training methods and from several training coaches that are similar doesn´t constitute one training method with authorship, the same way when someone writes one book the words got no authorship, but the sentences and the chapters and the entire book - that are made of the universal similar words to everybody - but the different sentences is what makes a book from one author or another.

Don´t you understand that wouldn´t be no meaning of promote one training method - to promote the Lydiard method by the way among any other one - if the similarity would be what´s prevalent among different methods ? !

I myself got the conclusion that is among slightly training difference that lies the distance in between the optimal training, the good one, the average one and the mediocre one. Kind of Chaos "butterfly" theory. I tust that the ultimate training, the optimal training, the perfect training is THAT ONE training workout AND JUST THAT ONE for that particular runner for that PARTICULAR DAY and ther´s not another training session that might substitute as optimal as THAT ONE. Kind of training sensibility.

Bill Baillie and Barry Magee both spent some time with Cerutty. Both have said that there wasn't much difference between the two. Of course no two people do the same thing identically.