Doing 70 MPW all on track every week

two words: Bob Schul

Advantages - accurate distance/time as no hills

-stays out of traffic, no pollution, car fumes etc

Disadvantages - boring which could affect running performance

-lack of different terrain which could affect performance

check out the loss of coordination in leg thread - specifically posts by foomiler

there is a risk that running the turns will lead to leg imbalances over time. you would need to be diligent on keeping clockwise laps & counterclockwise laps in balance.

Worked for Zatopek too.

I guess the question is why? There are so many great places to run, why limit yourself to the same scenary every day every run?

Im sure you could run all of your mileage on the treadmill too but that would suck. Running is difficult enough, no reason to throw up additional obstacles.

eurodonkey wrote:

Worked for Zatopek too.

He didn't do all training on track..he did a lot of forest runs

His training was revolutionary at the time but outdated long ago

Kevin Beck had an article/training programme in Running Times where he advised doing 18miler long run on track. Advantage is if you can do it on the track , you can do it on the road. the softer surface helps, and gels and water can be easy to access. I do a lot of 10milers indoors on a 200metre track, music helps.

ukathleticscoach wrote:

He didn't do all training on track..he did a lot of forest runs

At one point in his life he was asked why he did so much track work, and he answered that there was nowhere else convenient to run (i.e. in that town, at that time...).

You hsve not said what kind of racing you are training for nor what kind of track you are using. It can matter.

Bob Schul trained to race on a dirt track and trained on dirt tracks and grass mostly as far as I know.

If you are training for road racing you need to get used to the roads and to strengthen your legs for uphill and downhill running.

I began running in 1952. I have never been bored while running. Starting in late 1964, I trained under Coach Mihaly Igloi on a dirt track that was inside a 653 yard oval of grass. Most of the training was on the grass. Coach Igloi often said a runner "must have big goals". During thosa 20 months it was all interval training and it was often over 100 miles a week with the biggest month being 540 miles. I ran on that same grass oval for 9 years.

Starting about two years after Igloi moved to Santa Monica, I started to run once or twice a week on the road to get used to the pounding and to running hills. The main thing is that I found it all fun.

Yo!!! wrote:

two words: Bob Schul

No disrespect, but for us new to the sport, who is/was Bob Schul?

Won the gold medal in the 5000 in the Olympics in 1964, last one for the U.S. in that event.

Google him. He's even got a bio on Wikipedia and many threads on this site.

He also posts here from time to time.

I can't believe how much you guys must need to eat and drink, doing that kind of mileage.

In one summer in high school, I ran 25 miles 3 days a week. Over the 2 months I lost about 13 lbs if I remember correctly, and was eating like a pig. No, I wasn't overweight or very muscular to begin with.

Do you guys eat like swimmers? Does the body settle down to a weight at which it is difficult to lose any more mass? Do you get tremendously more efficient at running with more mileage?

Even when I was doing multis, I managed to be able to maintain, and even gain, weight, on a reasonable amount of calories--but of course, no distance work was involved.

Finally, do distance runners blimp out like swimmers, if they cease training?

Bob Schul also won the June 5, 1964 5K Race that I mentioned earlier. He ran 13:38 which at the time bettered the American record of 13:43.8, Bettered the US National Record of 13:45, was only 3 seconds off the world record of 13:35 and tied the 4th fastest 5,000 ever run. He also bettered Bruce Kidd's Aerican three mile record of 13:17.4. He ran the last lap in 55.4.

Sprint Geezer wrote:

I can't believe how much you guys must need to eat and drink, doing that kind of mileage.

In one summer in high school, I ran 25 miles 3 days a week. Over the 2 months I lost about 13 lbs if I remember correctly, and was eating like a pig. No, I wasn't overweight or very muscular to begin with.

Do you guys eat like swimmers? Does the body settle down to a weight at which it is difficult to lose any more mass? Do you get tremendously more efficient at running with more mileage?

Even when I was doing multis, I managed to be able to maintain, and even gain, weight, on a reasonable amount of calories--but of course, no distance work was involved.

Finally, do distance runners blimp out like swimmers, if they cease training?

The 25 miles a week for 2 months burned calories that only account for about half of your weight loss. You must not have been eating like a pig as much as you think.

I thought he meant he did just shy of a marathon three days a week, i.e. 75 MPW. And if that's not the case, let me just say I'm not being a smart@ss - with runners you never know what sort of crazy things they do. I had a friend in college once who just ran home for Thanksgiving one year - it was like 70 miles - and ran back after the break.

Yes, it was 75 per week, in addition to being normally active--biking, swimming, baseball, etc..

I feel for the guy who did a 70-mile run. I once (in high school again) watched a television program with my dad, in which it was stated that some "North American Indian" runners could easily run for a whole day.

Being a jerk, I immediately argued that I could run 100k in a day.

I ran from home to my parent's cabin, 96k. My dad followed me in the car. He spared me from doing another 4k because he was incredibly tired and bored. Every 10k he would harrass me, that I had done enough, that he gave up, but I was such an idiot I kept going.

I remember sleeping for basically 2 whole days after that. I can't remember how long it took--basically the whole day. I even got a police escort through some hick town!

What a jerk I was.

What surface is best for training. It is what you have available. When I returned to Miami of Ohio to finish my degree after leaving the Air Force and Mihali Igloi, I looked around the campus and found a field I could use just back of the married housing where my wife and I were staying. It was a large field about 350 meters long and since I was going to do interval up to 400 meters I decided to use it. It was a good surface of grass and although it sloped some, it had good footing. I found out it was for women's phys-ed and they were never there when I trained. That was 5:30 am and 5:30 pm. I used it all Fall until the snow's came. Then I had to find another area but that is another story.