Anybody use Pat Clohessy's "complex" training?

I wrote several articles on the subject back in the 80's. See Middle distances by Track and field News Press 1991 edition.

If more people used this philosophy we'd see a tremendous improvement in distance times across the board. Unfortunately, the NCAA abd it's coaches saw fit to destroy the more traditional thinking and there is no way for the distance community to recover.

I would mix my schedule up a bit so as to avoid the tedium that comes with yours. I also like recovery periods after major events.

Your second and third sentences are very interesting. Any chance you could expound on the NCAA and its coaches destroying the more traditional thinking?

Thanks Ray. Any chance you could post your articles, or do you have a link?

HRE wrote:

Your second and third sentences are very interesting. Any chance you could expound on the NCAA and its coaches destroying the more traditional thinking?

Traditionally cross country was a prep. for the track season. You still see evidence of this in that the world cross is in March which leads directly to the early track meets in europe. Indoor was a chance for sprinters and hurdlers to work on starts and to work on speed endurance or speed development. (440 yd guys ran 600 yds for example) It afforded an opportunity for New England and Northern US guys to get out of the snow.

NCAA coaches saw a chance to "create" another sport, justify expenses, salary, etc by making indoor an official sport. High school coaches did the same. IAAF saw the money possibilities and followed suit. As a result athletes are now asked to peak three times a year rather than have a natural progression in the distances from Cross thru the major outdoor meets in September. Distance guys are running events like the 5000m indoors. Countries like Australia are adding indoor tracks as venues. There is little concern for the long range development of the athlete through intelligent periodization. We never seem to see good collegiate athletes competing in Europe over the summer.

Clohessy saw this and decided that the Southern Hemisphere athletes who were essentially competing "out of season" needed a way to even the playing field.

KTJ wrote:

Thanks Ray. Any chance you could post your articles, or do you have a link?

I'll see if I can scan a few and post them here. Give me a day or two.

Rob DeCastella.

Thanks. I suspected something along those lines but didn't know. My son is in high school and loves indoor track. That's great. But he has a hard time figuring out why I'm ambivalent about it.

I've thought for a long time that T&F started going downhill when we started taking indoor too seriously. I'm glad to see the same sentiment from someone who actually knows something (unlike me).

Would it be correct to assume that while this complex system calls on training lots of different ways simultaneously, you would probably emphasize different aspects a bit more or a bit less at different times of year?

jsquire wrote:

Would it be correct to assume that while this complex system calls on training lots of different ways simultaneously, you would probably emphasize different aspects a bit more or a bit less at different times of year?

That's what I think Deek and Moneghetti did. Prior to, and during, the primary racing season (spring and fall in my case) they would really hammer the workouts. During the offseason they would ease up in intensity. Basically there is some periodization going on, but the goal is to steadily build and progress, and not start all over at the end of a season.

That's my interpretation from what I can glean online. I'm hoping that others can offer insight based on their personal experiences.

You've got the idea

Many years ago Runner's World ran a training profile for Paul Cummings. He said that he did the classic Lydiard cycle but he did the whole thing in a week rather than over a span of six months. The first two or three days of the week (it's been a long time since I read the story) were huge mileage days and later in the week there was some hill work and either a race or some intervals.

If I recall correctly Cummings said he did it this way because he found that he ran better when he had a little bit of everything mixed in rather than devoting a particular phase to one type of work to the exclusion of most everything else.

That's similar to what the Aussies who train under Clohessey did, though not identical. It's also similar to what Barry Magee has had me doing for years and it's similar to Lydiard's "race week/non-race week" schedule that I've plugged here many times and to what Bideau had Mottram doing. In all of these cases you're trying to maintain a balance among various types of work and you'd be monitoring results and goals then adjusting the type of work that you do accordingly.

When I was in college we had just begun running indoor meets. But no one took them seriously. We didn't do any sort of pace work and just raced off of our distance training. Once you start taking indoors seriously you may start doing significant amounts of hard, fast work. Then you have a short time away from that sort of thing before you do it all over again for the outdoor season. It makes for a long stretch of lots of hard running and if you're good enough to make nationals and then a national team it's an even longer stretch. I'm never surprised when our guys who ran well all year long are toast by the July-August races in Europe.

"Running with the Legends"(Sandrock) has a full chapter devoted to Deek and his "complex training. Also, "Running Tough" has some Deek workouts in there too. I am using it to train for Boston. I like the mix of workouts within the week.

Mon: 2mi warm up, 2 mi tempo, short jog to the hill, followed by 8xhill repeats (approx 45 sec each) 2 mi warm down.

Tue: 10 mi relaxed pace, 8x100m strides after run

Wed: 15 mi, on the flats. 5 mi loop done 3x, example might be 1st loop, alternating 1/2mi hard/ez, 2nd loop, alt hard/ez miles, 3rd loop, 5 mile tempo. Mix it up.

Thur: same as tue, 10 mi ez, strides

Fri: 2wu, 8x400m/w200m Rjog float, 2mi wd.

Sat: Long run, 20 mi hilly, with surges, ex: 1,2,3,1,2,3

w/3 min ez running after each pick up.

Sun: 6 mi ez