ct coach wrote:
I think runners do more know, but I think they ran more hard days in the past. They also raced a hell of a lot more with 2 dual meets a week. They might have only run 25-30 miles a week, but most of it was interval based.
I ran in HS from 81-85 in Michigan and this is what we did:
Summer - on your own - nothing was asked of us and no demands were made. Both coaches were good runners in their day (Head Coach was 5th in the State Meet for ILL - back when they ran all classes together and near the top in the mile) and I think they ran very little before the season, but don't know for sure that this is why.
Even though we were not told to run 500 mile summers, I had run a lot in middle school and had read a lot about the great runners from the 70's (particularly Salazar, Virgin, Spivey, Gregorek, Doug Brown, Fox, Mike Cotton, Malley, Hulst, Chapa, McChesney, Centro', Steve Lacy, Tim Hacker, Jim Hill, Scharsu, tons of others). By my sophomore track season nearly every one of these guys had set one or several American Records or Collegiate Records. Virgin and Salazar were at the top of the world for XC and were at near-WR level in the 5k, 10k or marathon. Virgin in '80 (2nd fastest all-time 10k) and Salazar in '82 (2:08 in marathon, 5 seconds off WR in 5k, 3 seconds off WR in 10k).
Everybody on the list (nearly) ran sub-8:25/13:20/28:00 by a young age. They all came from the era of big miles in the summer. Somebody like Hacker was a LOW-mileage guy at 60 mpw. So I looked at guys like Chris Fox who ran 100-110 mpw and decided I wanted to give it a shot.
Summer Weeks were like this:
Before 9th grade XC:
(getting over an 8th grade knee injury)
3 or 4 miles (rarely 5), sometimes 1x a week. as XC got closer some weeks were 3x-5x. So the most I remember doing was 24.
Before 10th grade:
(had run 4:50/10:20 as frosh - tried to do a Lydiard-style week)
M: 5 miles steady - prob harder than I should have - weights
T: 60 min hard effort (8-9 mi)
W: 75 min steady (11 mi) + weights
T: 6 miles fartlek 3:00 hard/3:00 at 6:00 pace
F: 75 min steady (11 mi) + weights
S: 45 min easy - 7:00 pace
S: 1:45 long run (15 mi) at easy pace (~7:00) - squeezing down to 6:30 the last 3-5 mi
= 60-63 mpw
Before 11th grade:
(had run 4:35/9:50 as soph)
M: AM - 7 miles in forest - 6:30 pace + weights
PM - 10 mi at 6:30 pace
T: 7 mi fartlek on golf course
W: 10 miles at 6:30 pace + weights
T: AM - 7 miles very hard on hills - 5:45 pace
PM - 10 mi at 5:50 pace on hills
F: 10 miles easy - 6:50 pace + weights
S: 5 miles very hard - 5:15 pace
S: 15 miles in 1:30-1:41 (6-6:45 pace)
= 70-85 mpw
This was all completely my "plan" (if you can call it that). I am not sure why I wrote each week out because there was no magic structure. It usually became a pattern of alternating 1-2 hard runs in a day with 10 miles easy, one hard 5 miler and the long run. My coaches had no part in making this up.
I will try and post what we did in season tomorrow.