Brian Sell's Swan Song

He hates that moniker actually.

Great interview. I wish I was the hypothetical kid at the beginning. I was a bit faster than Sell in HS and if I'd had his story as motivation...

Makes for a nice dream anyway.

wow, you are really in touch with him. you must be in the inner sanctum. thanks for the meaningful add to the thread.

bump

Isn't Sell gonna be a Dentist or something? Do you (OP) even have any idea what "blue collar" means?

Hint: it doesn't mean "didn't run exceptionally fast in high school." In fact, it has nothing to do with that.

I did a little research on Sell's marathon time progression since he started running with the Hansons and he went from National class to world class in very short amount of time.

'03 Chicago- 2:20

'04 OLY Trials 2:17

'05 Worlds 2:13

'06 Boston and Chicago 2:10

To go from 28th place at Chicago (2:20) to the world stage in a few years is crazy impressive. I would love to have a look at his training logs from 2002-2006.

I'm more confused having read your incoherent blathering. Maybe you could try defining 'blue-collar' rather than telling other people their definition is wrong.

DJJ wrote:

I did a little research on Sell's marathon time progression since he started running with the Hansons and he went from National class to world class in very short amount of time.

'03 Chicago- 2:20

'04 OLY Trials 2:17

'05 Worlds 2:13

'06 Boston and Chicago 2:10

To go from 28th place at Chicago (2:20) to the world stage in a few years is crazy impressive. I would love to have a look at his training logs from 2002-2006.

they use to post them online until just recently. His schedule was SUPER simple. doubles daily, high mileage, workout every 3rd day. 2 workouts were Goal Marathon Pace - 10 secs, and the 3rd was a long run with 3 miles at MP.

Daily mileage was OCD like. 22,22,22,21,22,22,22,21,22 etc, only changing on some workout days. Doubles everyday but the long run.

Workouts were like 3 x 3 at MP-10, or sometimes cutdowns. A lot of long intervals like 3x3,2x6,5x2,4x3 all at around MP-10.

is a good article, but straight from his training plan looked identical to what they talked about. His 150 weeks before a race was 22 a day on the dot.

He is a ruff collar runner.

A dentist is really a mechanic for the mouth.

A DENTIST IS A SADIST.

"I installed swimming pools for a living for five or six years when I was in high school."

Not too bright, eh?

They used to be, along with all the Hanson logs, up at

www.athleticore.com

. They made them private at some point.

His training was really no different than any of the other Hanson runners...he was just able to handle it better and run the workouts faster, AND run more mileage. He had incredible constitution.

From memory, they rarely ran faster than half-marathon pace during the marathon prep. Maybe a 8x800 for 5xmile workout once in 12 weeks. They ran a lot of progression runs and LONG repeats at what looked like marathon down to half-marathon effort.

They basically ran a workout, ran mileage for two days, ran a workout, repeat for x number of weeks like clockwork. From what I can remember it was in somewhat of an order of: LONG RUN, PROGRESSION RUN, REPEAT TEMPOS.

These are various workouts I can remember from my days of logging at Athleticore:

20-22 long run, finish with 3 fast

10 miles starting at 6:00 and -10s every mile or two down to sub 5:00 last mile

4x2 miles at HMP(half marathon plus 10)

20-22 long run, finish with 3 fast

5/3 progression (5 miles at 6 pace then GO)

3x3 miles HMP

20-22 long run, finish with 3 past

4/4 progression

2x4 miles HMP

20-22 long run, finish with 3 fast

2x5 miles HMP

10 miles starting at 6:00 and -10s ever mile or two down to sub 5:00 last mile

20-22 long run, finish with 3 past

2x6 miles HMP

8x800m

Anyway, something like that. They would repeat some of the workouts like the 3x3 or 2x4 or 4x2 to check progress. They always wrote down most of their 'easy' runs at 6:00 pace or 6:10 pace. Mileage always high. Sell I can remember going for streaks above 140 up to maybe 160? Most of the other guys were around 120-130.

I know many will crap on a program like this due to lack of fast running or too much long stuff. I actually ran my best marathon following similar "concepts". Everything was a "tempo" run of some sort. The shortest workout was a 2-3 mile balls to the wall run, say about 10k effort. I would do a 4-6 mile progression or hard run at half-marathon to marathon effort and a 6-9 miles progression run getting down to marathon effort. I also did a lot of long tempo repeats, 4x2mile, 5x2mile, 8xmile, 10xmile, etc. PR'd in the windy city by 2 minutes.

Alan

common wrote:

I'm more confused having read your incoherent blathering. Maybe you could try defining 'blue-collar' rather than telling other people their definition is wrong.

It's not my job to teach you how to read. Your grade school teachers failed you.

He works part time at Home Depot. He is blue collar. He is not a dentist yet.

Gonna' miss this guy. My favorite runner, watching him along with Hall and Ritz at the trials on my PC early in the morning that day, was what really got me into following elite running, and maybe even made me strive for more out of myself in the sport by trying my hand at running in college instead of just calling it quits after high school. Great guy to our sport, hope to see more like him.

[/sob]

Having a guy that can't break 10:00 in the 2 mile go 2:10 in the marathon is defiantly good for the sport of running.

That was because Home Depot ''hired'' Olympic hopefuls i 2007 and 2008, gave them jobs at which they worked 1 or 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, just so they could say that Home Depot supported american athletes.

That program was dropped already, and he now works at a running store.

And a definition of blue collar is basically lower working class, 9-5 manual labor jobs.

agreed