O:
I'd just like to say that, having spent about 5 weeks in Flagstaff, working fairly closely with Greg this past summer, I'd say the criticism of him not individualising training program to fit the athlete is far from the truth. In fact, to the point where I'd even like to see him generalise a little more to accommodate the individual's "weakensses" more (in regards to just one athlete, mind you).
I'd have to say, that interview was actually one of the best interviews I've heard for a long time (and I'm writing so for my own blog now). At one point, he even supported Lydiard by saying that the same thing happened to him (Lydiard) that people criticised him for being a 100MPW man. "But for the same outcome, he may presecibe one thing to one athlete but completely opposite to another," Greg said. So, whether he actually does so or not, at least he acknowledges it for sure. One of the things I liked about that interview was the fact that Greg said, more than one occasions, that "it all depends". If anything, I thought Robert, for the sake of the audience more than anything I'd assume, tried to squeeze some generalized answer. The truth is; there isn't any.
The debate about whether it's necessary to run 120~140MPW to become a good marathon runner; I'd say, if you can, sure, it's probably better off. I think, and we've discussed this many times this summer, what Greg was trying to say is to create the environment and physical and mental make-ups to be able to handle that much mileage comfortably. I think anybody can run 120~140 miles a week. I even did 125 when I was in college. But that was above my head. If you find someone who can handle that kind of mileage without breaking down, he/she would be that much closer to becoming a great marathon runner. When we (Greg and I...and Paige Higgins) were talking to Yoko Shibui about her training, she told us that she runs about 150 miles a week; and she's not a high mileage gal in Japan. People like Tosa or Takahashi would run more. Yoko is a speedster. The one we all know who didn't follow conventional high mileage approach of Japanese runners and did well would be Mizuki Noguchi. She does a lot of weight training and she does somewhat shorter distances faster. Yet, she had had a lot of injury problems in the past couple of years. I think I know Arthur would have attributed it to too much weight training. Considering her problem is more around hamstrings and groin area, I would probably tend to agree; but it's hard to argue Olympic gold medal, isn't it? At any rate, yet, I think she runs something like 900~1000km (not miles) a month. That's a substantial enough of mileage. In fact, her famous quote is: "Mileage (or kilometers) won't fail you," meaning, if you run a lot, you'll get results; and if you don't you won't. We can criticise her comment all we want but, atain, it's hard to argue results.
Good training, and good coaching, is how to put the athletes under greatest stress without breaking them and still improving; it's not so much of how much is too much. Atsushi Fujita, who had set the Japan's national record of 2:06:40 way back, I believe, in 2001 was probably the hardest training runner among Japanese. I think he ran something like 1200~1500km a month. He broke down. But could he have run 2:04 if he ran 1000km? We'll never know, will we? And if you asked him, he would have said no.
One last thing, though; I know people love to use Steve Jones as an example of "low mileage" marathon success but when I talked to him--he's a HUGE Lydiard fan and he was so upset when Lydiard passed away that he wanted to talk to me. I never considered him as a Lydiard kind of a runner so I asked him about the training. He told me that, when he gave a quote of 90MPW to the reporter, he meant about the average throughout the year. "Sometimes I may run 50MPW, but during the build-up, I may run as much as 140MPW..." It is VERY misleading to just pick up a quote or someone said that someone said...kind of quote. And there a lot of them on-line. It is not fair for Jonsie to say that he didn't train "as hard" just as it is not fair for us to say that Greg doesn't individualize training; just as it is not fair for us to say, O, that you advocate high quialty low mileage because, you're right, you never quoted it; you only seem to say "120~140 is too much and Greg's runners will burn out in 2 years" (was that what you said in the original post?) or something like that. That does not translate "you should run 90MPW all out everyday" but that's what we seem to be doing against Greg too.