Who has Pete Pfitzinger Coached?

christine pfitzinger.

Hordes of naive hobbyjoggers.

solid? wrote:

Hordes of naive hobbyjoggers.

Yes, solid. From what I have seen his approach (incorporating a lot of speed into marathon training) is far more similar to Kenyan training than Daniels (who I also like, but who uses a lot more MP efforts). I should, however, preface that with the fact that I have not read Pfitzinger's book. I have just seen overviews of his program on his website. Of course, judging by the lack of substance in your response, you are probably not qualified to critique.

Does anyone else know?

Me (one of the hobbyjoggers).

I have no idea who he has coached but I have read his book and think the programs are good, basic, no nonsense plans.

They basically center on hard medium long runs, steady long runs, long tempo runs and shorter faster stuff on the track interspersed with easy days. The higher mileage plans includes more easy doubles.

For those of us in the sub elite to hobby jogger range I'm really not sure it matters. If you train sensibly and hit all the key elements you will probably come pretty close to your limit. Off course switching it up and trying different programs from time to time is probably good too because it will stress some different systems.

The point is that a bare bones program is probably best for most of us, you don't need to be doing hours of plyometrics or one of the brad hudson workouts with 50 different steps. incorporated into a 20 miler.

a friend of mine trained for his first marathon with the PP book. He was a very good college 800m runner. he followed that book to a T, all alone, with the plan for 70 miles a week or something like that.

anyway, he ran a marathon all alone and ran 2:24, I was shocked. the elite guys were way ahead and their was a huge gap and my friend was in between and ran that $hit all alone. I was impressed, that book must be pretty damn good.

sp!kes wrote:

a friend of mine trained for his first marathon with the PP book. He was a very good college 800m runner. he followed that book to a T, all alone, with the plan for 70 miles a week or something like that.

anyway, he ran a marathon all alone and ran 2:24, I was shocked. the elite guys were way ahead and their was a huge gap and my friend was in between and ran that $hit all alone. I was impressed, that book must be pretty damn good.

Now that's a testimonial!

He threw my salt out the window

Fat Lady Not Singing wrote:

judging by the lack of substance in your response

Look in the mirror, clown. No, he's coached nobody of note to a high level of success. As to the comparisons with Daniels, Pfitzinger was coached by Daniels. That is not to plug Daniels, either, about any of the popular training manuals has been dumbed down to a pedestrian level to max sales for its target demographic. No, they're not as bad as Galloway but they aren't great, either. In this day and age, great coaches aren't writing books for mass consumption. I'd put Squires and Lehane's book far ahead of either Daniels or Pfitzinger, given the proof of efficacy of the principles of each. That's probably more substance than your thread deserves, though.

Himself.

I'll admit up front that I can't directly answer your question as to who Pfitzinger has coached. But, I can give you some personal experience having read the book and applied a great deal of the training outlined in his book (for the marathon).

I found that while I ran well in the marathon (2:24) using his more "speed" based philosophy, I ran better once I went to a training plan that incorporated more marathon pace training (2:19 PR). Now, perhaps I ran faster because I was more experienced and had more years of training under my belt, but I feel as though perhaps Pfitzinger doesn't focus enough on marathon-pace work.

solid? wrote:

Hordes of naive hobbyjoggers.

And what are you dickhead?

Are you Geb?Khannouchi? Hall?Meb? or Sell?

Do tell us your times so we can judge your opinions.

Or, are you a hobby jogger too who talks shit on a message board?

I dont have specific names, but the Advanced Marathoning book was used at least as a reference if not followed all the way to quite a few 2:25-2:35 marathoners I know. Its solid training. Nothing real cutting edge(at least not anymore). Tempos, stides, vo2 , med and long runs.

If used just for the pace charts in the back, its a good buy.

I think you're just fishing for a reaction, but you will have to look elsewhere. The person who recommended Daniels to me was someone who has run sub 13:20. I like his 5-15k program, but the marathon seems to rely too heavily on tempo pace efforts for my liking. That is why I started looking at the Pfitzinger plan. I wanted to find a program that incorporates more speedwork (like the Kenyans). I've spent MONTHS in Kenya training with several 2:05-2:07 guys, but their program (for me) is far less effective when trying to train alone at sea level. It also too intense for someone who has to balance their training now with work. Finally, thank you for the info regarding Squires and Lehane. Thank you (less so) for your (incorrect) opinion that the Daniels book is dumbed down. It is so obvious that it was not even worth mentioning (except in your mind) that no training plan should be followed blindly. Anyway, I'm just dumbfounded why some kids on here have to be so hostile. I'm not responsible for whatever your parents did or didn't do to/for you when you were in your formative years.

Smart hobbyjogger. Beats being someone who has nothing more than ad hominem criticisms, I pity that you are so mentally challenged that you cannot even begin to address the content presented. It must be really frustrating to live your life.

OP, like I said, you already got more substance out of me than your thread deserves.

My 2 Cents wrote:

I'll admit up front that I can't directly answer your question as to who Pfitzinger has coached. But, I can give you some personal experience having read the book and applied a great deal of the training outlined in his book (for the marathon).

I found that while I ran well in the marathon (2:24) using his more "speed" based philosophy, I ran better once I went to a training plan that incorporated more marathon pace training (2:19 PR). Now, perhaps I ran faster because I was more experienced and had more years of training under my belt, but I feel as though perhaps Pfitzinger doesn't focus enough on marathon-pace work.

This is similar to my experience (though my times are slower). Following the Pfitzinger plans I ran 2:32 and 2:29. Once I bought Arcelli and Canova's booklet from the IAAF and started following the advice in there I took my times down to the 2:24-2:25 range for the next few marathons I raced.

The big differences I noticed were that Pfitzinger had folks going from 1/2 marathon pace tempos and 90% MP long run workouts early to really focusing on 5k/10k type workouts in the final 6-8 weeks.

On the other hand, following Arcelli and Canova's advice would have a running similar stuff early on (with a bit more of the faster work done there), but spending the last 8 weeks focusing almost exclusively on near marathon pace work for the quality sessions.

I suspect that the Pfitzinger style plan might work well for someone who is a mega-slow-twitch type of runner, but I'd bet that for most others (and certainly for me) the Arcelli and Canova style training works much better.

I'm pretty sure Pete didn't coach Chrissie. Arch Jelley did.

Had Some Myself wrote:

[quote]My 2 Cents wrote:

I suspect that the Pfitzinger style plan might work well for someone who is a mega-slow-twitch type of runner, but I'd bet that for most others (and certainly for me) the Arcelli and Canova style training works much better.

For me it´s the other way around. I was a 3,55 1500 runner in my early twenties, and now that I have run the marathon for a few years I have had more success with more speed based training. When I focus to much on LT and MP running I start to feel sluggish and my marathon times have always been slower.