PETER COE- 'Five kilometre pace running is golden. It eradicates the need for big mileage'

Hello Marius; Glad to see that you still have time to read and respond on this board.

If it is not too much to ask, can you add a few comments about what Peter Coe prescribed for you. Did it fit into your ultimate theory of threshold running?

Best wishes

Great comment. I have also come to the conclusion that one of the biggest traps we fall into is thinking that hard 400 sessions are accomplishing more than they are. Think of this as (to me) an obvious proof; For a good collegiate runner,12x400 in 62-63 should be a relatively easy workout. To do even 5x800 in 2:04-2:06 on the other hand (with longer rest) requires a higher level of talent and fitness.

brit coach wrote:

i dont believe you get much benefit from doing the 400m reps at 5k pace. i was a sub-4 guy and could run 400's at 5k pace all day long and didnt feel like i was getting a great workout, mainly because an 800/1500 guy has the speed to to the first 10/12 much quicker. If you are going to do a 5k workout i would not do reps no less than 800m and better to do 1200m and elites could do mile reps. 400meters are the easy option and a bit of a cop out.

I agree....even if you do a lot of 400s with short rest it doesn't feel the same as a 5000m race does. 800s,1000s and 1200s feel much closer to a 5k race.

Although apparently Gebs favorite track session from his 5k/10k days was 50X400 in 63 with 30s rest, but he also did 5X2000m at close to 5k pace.

brit coach wrote:

i dont believe you get much benefit from doing the 400m reps at 5k pace. i was a sub-4 guy and could run 400's at 5k pace all day long and didnt feel like i was getting a great workout, mainly because an 800/1500 guy has the speed to to the first 10/12 much quicker. If you are going to do a 5k workout i would not do reps no less than 800m and better to do 1200m and elites could do mile reps. 400meters are the easy option and a bit of a cop out.

Well you forgot he mentioned this

It's a good one to do every few weeks towards the end of your base phase as a transition to tougher 5k-paced workouts.

The benefit is to help you transition to harder workouts while still being able to do base mileage. I agree that it should not be hard to run that pace for 400s, which I believe is the original posters point that if you are in the base phase that the workouts shouldn't be so hard that it take away from your overall mileage and the quality of that mileage.

cah87 wrote:

The benefit is to help you transition to harder workouts while still being able to do base mileage. I agree that it should not be hard to run that pace for 400s, which I believe is the original posters point that if you are in the base phase that the workouts shouldn't be so hard that it take away from your overall mileage and the quality of that mileage.

I just checked back in on this thread and was getting a little frustrated about how people were interpreting my post until reading yours, cah87.

Also, something else worth noting: I said goal 5k pace. If you're still in a base-building or early-competition phase, goal 5k pace is often pretty near current 3k pace.

hes referring to high mileage DURING season. Not so much off season.

I pride myself on my reading comprehension.

If you paid attention, all Bakken has claimed is that he looked at Coe's logs. If there were more to it then he would have said so. You and your maligning friend might think it's "safe to assume" this, that, and the other, but a truly intelligent and educated person wouldn't.

does anyone have some sample training weeks from coe's best years?

High School Musical on Ice wrote:

If you paid attention, all Bakken has claimed is that he looked at Coe's logs. If there were more to it then he would have said so. You and your maligning friend might think it's "safe to assume" this, that, and the other, but a truly intelligent and educated person wouldn't.

Truly intelligent persons wouldn´t do all these ridiculous claims about Coe´s mileage: "I´m sure that he did 100mpw. He just didn´t write it down" bla bla.

Coe's father was an engineer and prided himself on training Seb very scientifically. People think he didn't write down mileage in the logbook? Rediculous, that would be like Mozart leaving out some notes because he thought people would assume that they were there.

old timer. wrote:

High School Musical on Ice wrote:

If you paid attention, all Bakken has claimed is that he looked at Coe's logs. If there were more to it then he would have said so. You and your maligning friend might think it's "safe to assume" this, that, and the other, but a truly intelligent and educated person wouldn't.

Truly intelligent persons wouldn´t do all these ridiculous claims about Coe´s mileage: "I´m sure that he did 100mpw. He just didn´t write it down" bla bla.

That is a strawman. Don't be such a fool. I never forward such claims as more valid than Bakken's. Snell and Stewart would have better perspective than someone who only looked over the logs.

if you think about it, runners like el geurrouj and even ramzi now have done similar workouts, like this:

5-8 x 1k @ ~ 2:30 w/ 2-3 min rest

seems to work. el g and ramzi both ran pretty fast.

now you might say 2:30/km gives a 12:30 5k, but they're probably going 2-5% faster than goal pace, to get that extra bit of VO2 work in. i think 3k pace is better for maximizing VO2 anyway, so running a pace closer to 3k but not much faster than 5k pace is probably pretty sound, particularly for during the base and early training time of year (nov - jan?).

I don't think it really matters whether Seb Coes' weekly mileage was 10 miles or 200; he had to work hard to get to where he did either way.

The people who want to believe that Coe did low mileage seem to be looking for an excuse to run less. What they don't realize is that, to train as Coe supposedly did, they would have to work just as hard, if not harder, as Joe Elite middle-distance runner running more volume than Coe, except through quality-oriented pace sessions rather than mainly aerobic volume.

As for the people who want to believe that Coe did more mileage than he states,

it seems as though a lot of people want to believe that he trained one way or another to justify their own beliefs with regards to training. I don't think anyone is ever %100 certain that what they're doing is the absolute optimum. What you can do is continually educate yourself about training, about your body, how it responds to stimuli, and just in general always try to be progressive in your training; tweak it and always look for ways to make yourself a little faster, whether it be through adding miles, little drills, whatever... that's how Reid Coolsaet got from 15:51 to 13:21 in 4 (I think) years...

Also, whether or not Coe did high or low mileage... the whole "low mileage" thing probably psyched out his competitors pretty good!

Except Ovett... ah, good ol' 100mpw-in-base-period Ovett...

Not saying Coe did this but just for fun I am adding to the ways that you can avoid high mileage and still get the benefits Blood Doping or EPO. Altitude/Altitude chambers work too.

High School Musical on Ice wrote:

[That is a strawman. Don't be such a fool. I never forward such claims as more valid than Bakken's. Snell and Stewart would have better perspective than someone who only looked over the logs.

Read Bakken´s post once more! He was coached by Peter Coe for two years. Are you seriously believing that they never discussed Seb´s training (remember that Bakken was a 1500 runner at the time)?

Boy, I wonder who the fool really is...

Ovett-"I wanted to frighten the lfie out of people with my fitness"

Or something like that

100mpw avg for 20 weeks with a max (from some sources) of 140+. That plus 46 second quarter speed makes for a pretty damn good middle distance runner.

What I wonder is why you see "In his office, right accross my room there, he had on all the training diaries of Seb and I was allowed to look at it" and take that to mean more than it does. I'm seriously taking Bakken's account at face value. Why didn't he mention conversations with Coe in addition to peeping the logs if that's how it really happened? It figures that you would be wondering, I already know.

old timer. wrote:

High School Musical on Ice wrote:

[That is a strawman. Don't be such a fool. I never forward such claims as more valid than Bakken's. Snell and Stewart would have better perspective than someone who only looked over the logs.

Read Bakken´s post once more! He was coached by Peter Coe for two years. Are you seriously believing that they never discussed Seb´s training (remember that Bakken was a 1500 runner at the time)?

Boy, I wonder who the fool really is...

High School Musical on Ice wrote:

What I wonder is why you see "In his office, right accross my room there, he had on all the training diaries of Seb and I was allowed to look at it" and take that to mean more than it does. I'm seriously taking Bakken's account at face value. Why didn't he mention conversations with Coe in addition to peeping the logs if that's how it really happened? It figures that you would be wondering, I already know.

You´re just behaving like many other LetsRun idiots. You have made up your mind, and when you meet strong evidence pointing in another direction you just stick your fingers in your ears.