Derek Clayton

then why do american elites suck so much?

I've got the book.

I like the page that has a photo of his log. It's a notebook and he puts a days training on eack line with total mileage to the far right. Posted some pretty awesome daily totals. Notice the absence of intervals. Just long hard running.

He said "the best."

I always thought that Clayton got the "trained hardest" award. Of course, he was hurt countless times and later in his career mentioned that he thought he probably overdid it, though I don't know if he'd have gotten the same results had he not overdone it.

of course, he had also spent an entire year earlier in his career running intervals every single day to see if that worked. he just found that as a bigger runner, (6'2" and 160 lbs), the hard, threshold type runs worked best for him. however, in reading interviews, it never seemed that he felt they would work best for everyone. as a side note, the man was also married and worked 40 hours/week as a civil engineer.

I remember hearing reading or dreaming a story about Clayton. Apparently he would go on 'runs' (kamikazee if this is true) .. where he ran so hard he would 'lose it' - virtually unconscious. He wanted to see how far he could push his body. One time he was on one of these death runs and he was running so fierecly ... for so long that he literally ran into a tree - full speed. Knocked out. And was pretty seriously incapacitated for xxx amount of time. Fact? Fiction? somewhere in between?

That was part of the rumours/stories meandering about in my little neck of the woods back then. He was something of a maniacal training/racing god - even to the movers and shakers of the day. His injury resume was as prodigious as anyones, I understand.

Clayton and Clarke were the ultimate hard tempo runners. Now, we can say that about Tergat who generally run 4:50 pace or better in training. Remember, tempo runs are your best friends. Without hard distance runs, your speed doesn't mean jack sprat.

I've always been curious about whether his sideburns helped or hindered his efforts. Mr. Hodge?

Monty

well, maraton running ain't no beauty contest, thank goodness.

mutton chops were in, at the time. At least "down under"

There was a Sports Illustrated story about Clayton which mentioned the story about running into a tree. I don't know why they'd have fabricated something like that.

I always used Clayton for inspiration, especially when I was planning to do a long run in hot weather. If I wanted to wimp out, I'd think that Clayton was the fastest ever in my event and didn't get that way by bagging long, tough, runs.

I had a great story, written by Bob Moore, who was second, I believe, to Clayton, when he ran his 2:08 in Antwerp. The essence of the story was that Clayton was not at all popular among the other guys racing him. I'm going to see if I can track it down, but I think it got lost in a computer crash.

I believe that this begs the question, who's the prettiest marathoner. Anybody?

HRE:

A bit more Clayton:

http://www.time-to-run.com/marathon/athletes/clayton.htm

I will post some more wisdom from the book later.

#1- You must have missed where he also ran a 52 second 440.

#2- What about Tergat, Geb, KK, et all, are you suggesting their training is all wrong. Or that they'd do better chucking their training and just jogging around all the time like you advocate.

dunece say:

>#1- You must have missed where he also ran a 52 second 440.

#2- What about Tergat, Geb, KK, et all, are you suggesting their training is all wrong. Or that they'd do better chucking their training and just jogging around all the time like you advocate.<

You joking right? You think that Clayton "jogged around."

hahahahaha!

Clayton PR's

400m 52.8

800m 1:56.3

1500m 3:47.8

mile 4:07.5

5k 13:45

10k 28:32.2

10m 47:38

15m 71:37

Dina,

Brad picked up this book at a yardsale in NH for 50 cents. A good deal.

Here is a bit more, that I like:

?Running To The Top? Derek Clayton

Nature or Determination

Clayton was tested by Dr. David Costill at Ball State in 1970. Respiratory function tests were nothing unusual for a distance runner. Resting pulse rate of 35 BPM with a maximum rate 188BPM.

Previous research by Costill had shown a direct relationship between maximal ability of a runner and his or her distance running performance. Most of the distance runners Costill had tested had aerobic capacities ranging from 69-76 milliliters of oxygen consumed per minute per kilogram of body weight. Prefontaine VO2 max was 84.4, Shorter 71.3, Kardong 77.4.

Although their VO2 max was higher Clayton had the ability to utilize 80-85 percent of his maximum during a race. Most runners cannot do this.

Clayton?s max VO2 was 69.7. Therefore his running success cannot be explained totally in terms of circulatory or respiratory superiority. Costill was amazed, however at the speeds Clayton could tolerate with great ease. He was able to run an 8:32 two-mile despite being hampered by wearing the respiratory apparatus.

How much is nature and how much is determination? You have to be determined to find out.

?It is what a runner thinks he or she can do that creates success. Limits exist only on machines that test physiology rather than psychology.?

Hodgie,

You need to check out the chapter in that book about training logs. There is a picture of one of the pages of Clayton's log and, if one looks close, they would see that apparently Clayton trained much harder than he even admits.

If my memory is correct, i believe the four consecutive weeks that can be seen in the photo were something like: 175, 194, 183, 145. Pretty ridiculous! He just had lots of days of 17-18 in the morning and 10 in the evening with a couple of 24-30 mile runs as well. He did end up running really fast (2:08:34).

Resting heart rate of 35bpm?!?!?!? Blood doping anyone?

My resting heart rate was under 40 at one point, and I never did any blood doping. I wasn't even that fit...maybe running 50 miles a week and terribly inconsistent...

Also, he may have measured it for 12 seconds and multiplied by 5...not very accurate. When I take my pulse I always count the number of beats in a full minute. Even though my RHR is about 50 right now, I'm sure that for a short period (15-20 secs) I can induce a sub 40 RHR...defeats the purpose of making the measurement though...

All the talk about him training so hard and "going crazy" on runs, along with the low heart rate, sounds like some drug use here. Maybe not. How can someone do that much hard running? You've gotta recover sometime.

Miles my boy, Clayton had balls that dragged on the ground. You see back in the day white men were tough/mean sonsofbitches. Please refer to threads on Nick Rose, Gerry Lingren, Prefontaine, AlSal, Dick Beards.