Frank Shorter Training Principle?

I just read Shorter's book, Olympic Gold, and he that theory is defiently for year round training. His weekly routine was two runs monday totalling 17 miles. Tuesday was interval workout. Wednesday is the same as Monday. Thursday is speed work, always done in the afternoon after a 7 mile AM run. Friday is the same as Mon. & Wed. Saturday is a race or a two run day totalling 17 miles with the afternoon a 10 mile tempo with the middle 7 at 5 min. pace. Then Sunday is 20 miles with the second half sometimes 5-5:30 pace, before Montreal he ran the first 10 in 5:40 pace and the second 10 under 5 min. pace. So to answer the question a tempo run is not one of the 2 workouts. Those are reserved for speed work on the track.

From what I have read, Frank was a strong believer in HARD/EASY days. His hard days were very hard and his easy days were very easy (i.e. as slow as 9-10 minute miles).

There is a section on him in one of Mike Sandrock's books.

I forget if he was talking about himself or not, but there was a guy who ran with Frank one day and was surprised how easy the workout was. The next day was an interval session, and the guy got severly dropped. Frank's quote was something like "Little tougher than yesterday, huh?"

It is a good principle. Without hard days you can not progress. AND. Without easy days you can not have hard days.

great story about shorter:

a firend of mine who is editor of a local sports magazine called frank shorter for an interview once. my friend was a little nervous when calling, think "wow, frank shorter, florida track club, olympic gold..."

he says that shorter answers the phone with "yeah, what do you want?" and sounded completely annoyed with having to do the interview. my friend is asking him his questions and then asks "have you ever thought about writing a book on training?"

shorter says, "no, do you know why? because if I did it would be a page long. here's what you do: you gotta run 130, 140 miles a week, two hard workouts a week and a long run. that's it."

no one really runs 9-10 minute miles do they? thats brutal, your form would be shit and that pace is just unbearable, if i ran over 7:30s i'd probably run myself off a bridge...

trackhead:

Good story! Yep, that sums up what Mr. Shorter beleived in.

I mention Frank's name when we discuss training because people know what he did, how consistent he was, and how he was able to peak when it mattered most. Heck he would have had a second gold medal for the Olympic marathon distance had the East German Cierpinski not been doped. Not too long ago real evidence was presented to the public stating the Cierpinski was on the juice. Can you imagine what a difference it would have made in Frank's life and for the rest of Americans had Cierpinki been caught and Frank was given the the gold in 1976? I think American's would be more confident in their ability to take on the rest of the world in distance running.

You forget to mention the bottle of whine every night, till he whined himself to sleep.

After 1976 this whining overtook Frank, he became a full time whiner and to this day continues to enjoy his whine in public and various publications.

If there was a gold medal for the American whine, Frank would be the proud recipient of it.

Hey Sheeter, how many USA runners ran faster then what old Frank S. ran back in 1972 in Japan this year? What one, maybe two after 31 years,,haaaaaa! 2:10:30 in 1972, FS is the finest wine we ever had here in the USA. Now we have a guy who could win Gold in 2004 but he has a hang nail or some shit..whatever and won't run. Frank Shorter and Will Rodgers were the best ever.

Frank Sheeter wrote:

If there was a gold medal for the American whine, Frank would be the proud recipient of it.

No, he'd get the Silver Medal. However, a year later he'd find out the Champ was whine-doping.

I never met a hang nail I didn't like.

what hang nail do you like most? i smell bullshit from u will, u know notathing.

Will Rodgers wrote:

I never met a hang nail I didn't like.

This seems to basically be the Hanson's approach. If you look at Nick Cordes' journal on run-insight, you'll see that he was right back into two hard workouts a week only a couple of weeks after the chicago marathon. There doesn't seem to be any real periodization, just a sense of pacing oneself over an entire season/career, and, always keeping the mileage high along with the two workouts and 20 miler on sunday. exactly like shorter said.

i've always been curious why there is such a disparity between the "How They Train" account of shorter's training and his autobiographical account. he cites 120 mile weeks in his autobiography, while Wilt has him at at least 150 or so with two workouts/week.

also, when they were in Vail before the 72 olympic trials, were they also doing speedwork along with the 3-a-days and 170 mile weeks? at 8000 feet?

Funny about the training in Vail where he and Galloway and another fella (? Bachler?) were running 160-170 miles per week. Now, my question is this: How many miles of that did Galloway walk?

This thread is proof that absolutely NO ONE is immune to a letsrun bashing.

tinman wrote:

Funny about the training in Vail where he and Galloway and another fella (? Bachler?) were running 160-170 miles per week. Now, my question is this: How many miles of that did Galloway walk?

Not a single step of it. When Galloway was training and racing at an elite level, he didn't take walk breaks. He only started spewing that nonsense later when he started trying to sell books/magazines/expo tickets. Galloway knows he's lying, and his own background proves it.

tinman wrote:

Can you imagine what a difference it would have made in Frank's life and for the rest of Americans had Cierpinki been caught and Frank was given the the gold in 1976? I think American's would be more confident in their ability to take on the rest of the world in distance running.

Tinman, believe or not, back in the day no one that I ever knew took their lead from Frank Shorter, so the only one who cared about Cierpinski was Shorter. Americans were quite confident in their ability to take on the rest of the world.

Malmo.

I know you and the other American greats in the 1970s and into the early 80s were confident. I am referring to runners of the 90s and now who think of the Africans as unbeatable. I was suggesting that our youth are greatly influenced by heroes. I notice the depth of running improves for Americans every time a couple high schoolers run really fast times. Others start to think that they can kick-butt too if they train enough and believe in themsleves too. For the vary reason that people need heroes to become inspired and confident, I am hopeful that runners like Ritz, Hall, Webb, Flanagan, and Buttry compete with aggressiveness against competitors from others countries. If they do, I see a boost in American running to follow.

trackhead wrote:

great story about shorter:

a firend of mine who is editor of a local sports magazine called frank shorter for an interview once. my friend was a little nervous when calling, think "wow, frank shorter, florida track club, olympic gold..."

he says that shorter answers the phone with "yeah, what do you want?" and sounded completely annoyed with having to do the interview. my friend is asking him his questions and then asks "have you ever thought about writing a book on training?"

shorter says, "no, do you know why? because if I did it would be a page long. here's what you do: you gotta run 130, 140 miles a week, two hard workouts a week and a long run. that's it."

hmmm.....you sure didn't call a number in the m's rather than the S's?

Noam Chomsky wrote:

i've always been curious why there is such a disparity between the "How They Train" account of shorter's training and his autobiographical account. he cites 120 mile weeks in his autobiography, while Wilt has him at at least 150 or so with two workouts/week.

In his autobiography (Olympic Gold) Frank said he averaged 120mi per week over a period of many years. Therefore, he clearly ran more than 120 at times. In fact, here's a quote from his book that metions the super-high mileage weeks.

"We ran twice a day, sometimes three times. Twenty miles a day, sometimes more. There were a couple of 170-mile weeks... All we did was run - run, eat, and sleep."

gm, where did you take your lead from if it were not from fs? who in the hell was the leader in your excellence, where did you learn your habit or perfect it? how did you know what you should back in the day that you could rule the usa in the steeple/roads? also why did the usa lose their confidence after 76? gm, do you ever wish you could be fs, just think of the fame? fs was the man then & now, good for him!