modern coaching easier than old school?

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 like to take a mid-century modern approach myself.

Agreed. I wouldn't say "easier," per se; but we train smarter nowadays. Back in the day, as has been stated, there would be a lot more racing and a lot more speed work. We now know that recovery is the most important part of training.

If we were training easier, I think times would be slowing down, but times, in the past 50 years, have most certainly sped up.

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.

gotta say wrote:

Agreed. I wouldn't say "easier," per se; but we train smarter nowadays. Back in the day, as has been stated, there would be a lot more racing and a lot more speed work. We now know that recovery is the most important part of training.

If we were training easier, I think times would be slowing down, but times, in the past 50 years, have most certainly sped up.

Not so fast. Going back 50 yrs takes you to 1960 and if you look back at the 60's there are a LOT of mile times from 4:01 to 4:10. Keep in mind that these are 1.5 seconds longer than your 1600s and that they were run on dirt and cinder tracks. Also remember that the only 3:55, 3:58, 3:59 and 3:59 were ALL RUN in the 60's!

During this era the 2-mile was not widely run. I don't know when some states adopted it, but Lindgren (who ran 4:01y, and 13:44 for 5k and 13:17 for 3 miles) never had a sub-9:00 outdoor 2mile (he did run the still standing 8:40.0 indoors). This may be why so many of the great 2miles were run in the 70s - the toughest generation of HS runners.

Also, you can't compare XC times because many states were running 1.5 miles and 2 miles. For most it wasn't until the 70's that they moved up to 3 miles.

It is completely false to say that we have "sped up" over the past 50 years. The 60s I explained, the 70s were the fastest and deepest decade by far, then in the 80s it tapered off. The top-end times were still there, the 4:03-4:05 miles and 8:50-55 2miles, but the depth started to slip. It took less to make the top-20 or top-50 nationally anymore, and there weren't any great 3mile/5k and 6mile/10k times anymore. sub-14 and sub-30 were not happening. Nobody ran marathons in the 2:20s anymore.

In the 90s the wheels fell off completely. Nobody should argue any different. Most people know why this is. I bet the times and depth were worse than the 60s if you could adjust for the lack of 2mile races and the dirt tracks ... way worse.

And then the aught-aughts came along and the Aryan-trio of Webb-Hall-Ritz ushered in a new decade with new and amazing standards. The Interweb allowed everyone to know that Ritz ran 85 miles a week before he ran that solo-8:48 3200m indoors just before he placed third in the WORLD. Read the "How They Train" issue of The Harrier each year from 1980 to the present and you will notice that FL finalists now routinely run 70-100 mpw compared to 25-40 mpw in the 90s.

I would easily rank the 70s ahead of the past decade in terms of quality and depth of times. For every Chris Derrick running a 13:55 5k ... there was a Jon Zishka running 4:03, 8:50, 13:55. For every Chris Solinsky running 8:42 there was an Alan Scharsu or a Dave Merrick coming out of the Midwest with similar times nearly 30 years earlier. In the 70s there were runners like Salazar who ran 14:04, 14:06 and 14:08 in the same year. They had sophomores running 29:15 track 10ks. Check into it.