Old School Oregon training week

Ok, so one more thought on this. As a HS kid who grew up watching and hearing about Oregon, and then running at Arkansas, I have to tell you, there is absolutely nothing that extraordinary about the training I'm reading here. Salazar could do big miles, but I've seen 50+ guys do training harder than this. From a historical perspective, it's interesting, but I don't see the big deal.

Here's a sample of workouts from the Arkansas days in the 1990s.

2,000 (5:17) 1,600 (4:18) 1,200 (3:12), 800 (2:05), 600 (1:32), 400 (59) 300 (42) 200 (27)

3 minutes rest after the 2k, 3 minutes after the 1,600 and 1,200, with rest decreasing down to 55 seconds after the 800m.

----------------------------------------------------------

3x1mile (4:20 with 3 minutes rest)

4x800m (1:58 with 2 minutes rest)

5x 1 mile (4:38 on grass with last 800m uphill) with 4 minutes jog inbetween.

8x400m 56 seconds with 55 seconds rest

16x400m 59.5 seconds with 60 seconds rest

-----------------------------------------------------

Again, I haven't put the time into incorporating this into a full schedule, but with a long run at 5:50 pace (14 miles), a 10 mile steady state in 52 minutes, mile repeats, 400s, and your regular 10 mile trail runs easy at 60 minutes, and morning runs, well, there you go.

[quote]schiefer wrote:

Oregon "Got" the cream of the crop. They had virtually no one in the 90s.[quote]

As long as you are being a dick Schief, I will correct you. When I was looking at Oregon's dominating performance at NCAA XC this November, much was made of the level of talent on the team currently. Looking at the HS PR's of the ones that actually ran this fall, I noticed that America has had something like 45-50 sub-8:50 HS 2-milers in all of its history.

Oregon has four of them right now.

Was I not speaking of the 90s? I think it's so funny that people have no sense of history. People seem to think that Oregon has had a strong Men's program all along, and it's not true. They are good now, fantastic. I just wonder why they were no good in the 90s.

Squid wrote:

Bill McChesney gave me a copy of Winning Running and I started doing the workouts to the letter my senior year in 1982.

Is there any real material difference between "Winning Running" and "Competitive Runner's Training Book". The former was published in 1978, the latter in 1984.

Appreciate any comments from those who have read both.

schiefer-hope you didn't that kinda of training...

schiefer wrote:

Here's a sample of workouts from the Arkansas days in the 1990s.

2,000 (5:17) 1,600 (4:18) 1,200 (3:12), 800 (2:05), 600 (1:32), 400 (59) 300 (42) 200 (27)

3 minutes rest after the 2k, 3 minutes after the 1,600 and 1,200, with rest decreasing down to 55 seconds after the 800m.

----------------------------------------------------------

3x1mile (4:20 with 3 minutes rest)

4x800m (1:58 with 2 minutes rest)

5x 1 mile (4:38 on grass with last 800m uphill) with 4 minutes jog inbetween.

8x400m 56 seconds with 55 seconds rest

16x400m 59.5 seconds with 60 seconds rest

-----------------------------------------------------

The CRTB is significantly better I found. Can observe the pattern of workout easier, more compact, in meters. Also has more on circuit training. I actually checked last night and CRTB and Winning Running have the same exact workouts listed.

Chris Walsh also wrote a good little book on Bowerman Training called "The Bowerman System". It is hard to find.

Bowerman tailored his training to the athlete. In several cases he took runners who had trained higher miles and were not progressing and had them lower their miles and slow off their interval pace so that they could retrench and begin to progress again.

Bowerman often wrote (and said) why run 100 mpw if you can break 4 minutes for the mile on 25 mpw? His point was not to run miles just for their own sake.

Most of his runners ran quite a bit more but Bowerman believed that a miler (for example) could run faster on a weekly diet of:

3 miles of date pace

1 mile of goal pace

A trial run

A long run of 10 miles

A very nice summary of a system that works quite well for most people, and good advice still today.

As to the Arkansas workouts, they need to be put in context. The only guys who could do that workout would be Graham Hood or a similar talent. If an average(talented) guy did that, it would have to start at 4:30 or 4:40.

Want some history? Pre at his peak in 72 ran 3x1mi in 4:08-4:10 with 3-4 min rest.The average guy at Arkansas was not quite in Pre's league.

I'd agree that this is a system that either as-is or with minimal tinkering works very well for most runners. For me the really beneficial part was the early season emphasis on date-pace running, which very quickly starts to feel easy.

When Jim Spivey wrote in an earlier thread that one of his goals was to "float" much of is track work I made the connection. That is it in a nutshell, practicing running fast but under control. Fluid.

I think Art Boileau was a walk-on and he did quite well.

walkons wrote:

[quote]Exxx-Duck wrote:

Captain Krunch: I would say that in the early 80\'s that there were maybe 15 walk-ons. Oregon was a fairly friendly walk-on program then. Some of those guys went on to be either Pac-10 or NCAA champions (McMonigal, Nelson). I also remember some Norweigns that got pretty fast and were scoring in the dual meets, though I\'m not sure if they were recruited.

Also, don\'t forget about guys like Mcguirk, Randall, Morisette, that were there around \'83 (as walk ons?) and were very close to 4:00

We had lots of guys that did these workouts. That group had 7-9 guys doing these, week after week, year after year.Schiefer

another canuck wrote:

A very nice summary of a system that works quite well for most people, and good advice still today.

As to the Arkansas workouts, they need to be put in context. The only guys who could do that workout would be Graham Hood or a similar talent. If an average(talented) guy did that, it would have to start at 4:30 or 4:40.

Want some history? Pre at his peak in 72 ran 3x1mi in 4:08-4:10 with 3-4 min rest.The average guy at Arkansas was not quite in Pre's league.

And in fairness, at Ark, there were 3 groups that did workouts. The workouts I detailed (besides the 5x1 mile on grass) was only done by the milers.

This group that did the workouts I listed, had PRs between 1:45-1:49, and 3:33-3:40.

So the "Average" guy at Arkansas didn't do these. And BTW, and "Average" at Ark in the 90s was generally considered to be a 3:45, 8:15 guy.

FYI:This is Salazar's 1977 log...in '78, he was the NCAA coss country champion.

fact.checker wrote:

FYI:

This is Salazar's 1977 log...in '78, he was the NCAA coss country champion.

FYI, that's been pointed out 3 times already.

mitslel wrote:

Speaking of Dellinger, what happened to Oregon in the 90s? They were so strong, but then just had nothing to speak of (when compared to the 70s and 80s).

Did he just check out?

By the end of the 80s, Oregon was no longer getting the cream of the crop. Dellinger was never the greatest recruiter, Oregon got the top kids for a long time because of their distance tradition, but by then other schools like Stanford were offering better deals. Without talent, the program went downhill.

canadian wrote:

I think Art Boileau was a walk-on and he did quite well.

All-time marathon PR of 2:11:15 set in the 1986 Boston Marathon.

mitslel wrote:

Speaking of Dellinger, what happened to Oregon in the 90s? They were so strong, but then just had nothing to speak of (when compared to the 70s and 80s).

Did he just check out?

-----

This is classic. In 1991, I called Dellinger to tell him I was going to walk on at Oregon. I had run 3:45, 4:05 indoors, at 4500 feet, and was an NCAA Indoor Qualifier.

I said, Bill, I don't need money, so if you don't have an athletic scholarship, that's not a big deal, I have money to pay for school......

So, no BS, Dellinger tells me "You know, we have a really good team, so I'm not sure we even need you."

Classic this guy turned down free points at NCAAs, FREE POINTS....

Maybe you pushed some buttons when you called to "tell him", that you were going to walk on. I bet if you would have asked, opposed to telling, things might have turned out differently.

I'd like to get those logs as well. I am very familiar with the competitive runner's handbook, but, am always looking for more details.