John Walker's Training

I heard he did most of his training in Afghanistan with the Taliban.

His coach, Arch Jelly, was a supporter of Lydiards methods but with a more modern approach to speed work and incorporating other aspects of training (such as very short speed work and slightly less over all mileage). Lydiard in referring to effort time trials is basically meaning tempo pace work, or lactic threshold training.

93% is way about aerobic capacity.

That's what I am wondering. Is he talking about 93% overall effort or 93% effort of that race distance? He's a great coach but not much of an author.

If I remember correctly, he was afflicted with compartment syndrome, so he would basically go as hard as he could for as long as he could until his calves would lock up. Usually involved a hard 10 mile run over his lunch hour.

that is possibly the most stupid thing i have ever heard. please think before you type.

Not many people know, but John Walker did a lot of high intensity, low duration interval work in high quantities (think carefully, it does make sense) this was because John Walker had horrific injury problems (archilles) for the mid to latter part of his career. He and Arch Jelley devised a way by which they would train to just under the point where his archilles would crap out, stop, let it settle, and then come back and do it again. Pretty amazing athlete, when you consider all his hassles, yet still ran his fastest mile (3min49.08) well into the twilight of his career.

wheener wrote:

that is possibly the most stupid thing i have ever heard. please think before you type.

you should think before you call yourself wheener... CAUSE YOU ARE ONE JACKASS!

Swedes is right... its in his Biography

Unless you competed in the same era as John mr wheener, you don't know anything, in fact you're probably still hoping to break 6 minutes for the mile. And yes I am right with my info.

Ok guys,

I am really trying to find out some good info on these subjects so could we stop acting like idiots? Thank you.

he started it, but okay

I wrote this to Tinman earlier today

John Walker was an amazing athlete. No one could train with him on a regular

basis. He killed them and yet he did not set out to do that. He was just at

such a higher plane than anyone else when he was at his prime.

Peter Snell tested John in Dallas and said that John was superior to him in

almost every way except Peter was quicker over 200, 400 and of course 800.

One day just prior to 1984 Olympics Arch had a 15 mile run scheduled for

John, my buddy Gary Palmer (2:14 marathoner) also had one scheduled (Gary

ran with John maybe twice a week). A few others decided they would join the

workout.

The first 5 miles or so passed without incident (although the pace was

"on").

Gary said suddenly John collapsed, doubled over in agony (some sort of

Stomach cramp).

Being rather competitive, the group paid no attention to John and

immediately clamped on the pace and left him where he was.

By 10 miles Gary was way out in front having dropped the others. When

suddenly John appeared alongside him and said " So you bastards want a race

!".

He then proceeded to run away from Gary.

When Gary arrived back at the car park John had gone. John had run the

workout in 1hr 17. Gary was a tick over 1 hr 20.

He said it was the fastest 15 miles he ever ran in training. He was

exhausted.

So that gives you a good idea of the measure of John.

Arch stated in 1985 that the biggest mistake he made with John was deciding

to run the 5k at LA in 1984. He felt in retrospect that they should heve run

the 1500. He also felt John would not have beaten Coe but would have given

him a run for his money.

But it was a combined decsion so as they say. Thats life.

All I did was state facts, did a little research and you will see I am correct. I'll bet wheener you didn't even know Brooks shoes had a whole John Walker line, including spikes.

I remember that in the years prior to the Montreal Olympics, Walker worked in a quarry, ran a good paced 10 miles or so at lunch or before work, then a second session after work, usually another hardish run or some sort of intervals. He did the long Sunday run, as Kim alludes to. There was a story about a time he lead a local marathon for 23 miles and dropped out saying he'd gotten his long run in.

By Montreal he was struggling to hold together physically. Eventually he developed compartment syndrome and found he could only run for half an hour at a time. So he jogged a half hour twice a day for several weeks to get into shape, then began doing the 30 minute runs very hard. There was also a session he reportedly did where he'd run up a 2 1/2 mile long hill in 15 minutes, climb into Arch Jelley's car for a ride to the bottom and run it again.

And do I ever remember the Brooks RT-1. It was and is my all time favorite shoe. I wish Brooks would get into the retro movement and reintroduce it.

Ah, the RT-1, man that was one light training shoe. I had a pair also, never got any of the spikes though.

It's probably worth distinguishing between the training Walker did through about '76 from the training he did when he had compartment syndrome, which seems to have come on shortly after '76. Kenny Moore had a beautiful, long article on Walker and Bayi prior to the '76 Games (about the race which, of course, never came to be -- the article is reprinted in Moore's book "Personal Bests") and outlines problems Walker was already having with his Achilles and calves.

I have a tape with Walker outlining that he did the long, Lydiard type training but thought people often forgot to include speedwork (this is a copy of a copy of a copy of a tape that was, I believe, done in New Zealand).

The original question was a good one. Given that Walker came out of New Zealand where Lydiard's influence was perhaps strongest, what was his pre-'76 training like?

My personal hero. I have read about as much as I can about him. I met him at an indoor meet in LA in the mid 80's and he struck me as a pretty relaxed fella. Him and Steve Scott were hot and heavy on the race to 100+ sub 4:00 miles at the time. (or maybe passed it?!). Lydiard is my other hero!

A bigger miler that I could relate to physically!

ty

I had the Brooks John Walkers and did they ever last! I swear I wore one pair for at least a year and a half. Next to my Tiger Excalibur?s, they were the best trainers.

Monty