Bill Squires Sounds Like A Raging Egomaniac

To my count Bill was involved in the writing of 5 (6?) books. One was about his "SWIP" method of training, "Squires' Money-back Guarantee Formula for Running Improvement". Generally it was about placing workouts with proper recovery.

Then after his success with the GBTC, he wrote 2 (I thought 3) similar books with Ray Krise about training the masses, "ImprovingYour Running" and "Improving Women"s Running".

They also wrote a book about the history of the sport, "Fast Tracks: The History of Distance Running" that was then current to 1983 when it was published. Finally, He collaborated with Bruce LeHane, the Boston University coach, in his most current work "Speed with Endurance".

Bill is a fine person, great coach and world class talker. A quality human being.

Bill Squires Sounds Like A Raging Egomaniac

So?

After I posted that it occurred to me that I think Bill did write another book or two or at least was involved in writing something more. But the fact that we can't just pull up a number of books or a title must say something.

One thing that strikes me as a difference between Bill and both van Aaken and Lydiard is that Bill never got into the fitness running thing as much as either of the others did. Lydiard, van Aaken and Bowerman all wrote and talked a lot about running for health. I've always thought that Squires pretty much kept his focus on "serious" racers.

I do recall reading something about his coaching in Running Magazine back in the 80s. It showed a lot of emphasis on good volume, long runs with surges and long reps with short recovery because "that's what happens in a race."

Obviously all three coaches emphasize good volume and long runs to some extent. The surges in Squires runs aren't prescribed in Lydiard's system but the runs his guys did were over very hilly terrain oftentimes and the hills probably had a similar function. Lydiard also favored short recoveries when doing long reps but may have used shorter reps with longer recoveries more frequently than Squires did. I don't recall seeing a lot of 220s and 440s in the logs on Hodgie-san's site but will check again.

Van Aaken's slow runs were not always steady slow runs. He liked to have runners practice various speeds year round, more like Squires than the original Lydiard model, but was almost never a fan of short recoveries regardless of the length of the reps. His runners might have covered, say fifteen miles in two hours yet rarely have run at 8:00 mile pace during the entire run.

Really, I think all three systems have a lot more similarities than differences.

Below is some of Bill's curriculum vitae. I found his books nearly incomprehensible, like reading "Finnegans Wake" (not comparing Squires to Joyce haha)

I always thought Coach Squires is well known. If you have your sights on being a top marathon runner you certainly ought to be aware.

I recommend that you get his books and attempt them and keep them close by on your bookcase for good karma.

http://www.archive.org/stream/yearbook1977bost/yearbook1977bost_djvu.txt

http://www.beaconsathletics.com/hallfame/squires.html

http://distancerunningobserver.blogspot.com/2010/09/bill-squires-bill-rodgers-and-gbtc.html

BILL SQUIRES "Mr. Track and Field"

In his first five years of coaching he helped lead his athletes to five championships in

Massachusetts. The next fourteen years his team at Boston State College has won 44 team

championships; 17 athletes were all-New England and 12 college All Americans, of which three

were National Champions and Mark Duggan — American Record holder, two mile steeple

chase. These athletes have developed through a program which have no dormitory

developments, no financial aide and Boston State does not have a track facility.

Bill has been a U.S. State department consultant to India, training their Olympic prospects.

He has started the girl's track and field program at the college and ran the first New England

Track and Field Championship for collegiate women called the Codfish Bowl Championship,

which is run the first Sunday in may at Boston College High School with 16 schools in

attendance this past year.

Bill is an active clinician in the east, and was the feature speaker at the Hall of Fame Race. He

has been the chief coordinator for the junior high program for the city of Boston which will get

under way this coming year. He has given clinics to male and female coaches. For the past five

years, he has been directing the All-American Track Camp. He also has written a book on his

training methods which is used nationally and internationally. The name of the book is "World

class formula for running improvement". This book includes S.W.I. P. training used by Bill

Rodgers, Randy Thomas, Vin Flemming, Tom Fleming etc.

Bill was a two time All American miler at NOTRE DAME. He also has coached the nationally

ranked Greater Boston Track Club which has won four National Championships, and has placed

in six. At Boston State, Bill is an Associate Professor in Physical Education, Health Education

and track and field. The yearbook staff would like to express it's gratitude and congratulations to

Bill Squires for fourteen great years.

Fast tracks : the history of distance running since 884 B.C.

Author: Raymond Krise; Bill Squires

Publisher: Brattleboro, Vt. : S. Greene Press, ©1982.

Edition/Format: Book : English : 1st edView all editions and formats

Rating: (not yet rated) 0 with reviews - Be the first.

Improving your running : 52 weekly sessions from jogging to fun runs to 3-mile to 6-mile to marathon races!

Author: Bill Squires; Raymond Krise

Publisher: Brattleboro, Vt. : S. Greene Press, ©1982.

Edition/Format: Book : English : 1st ed

Summary: Discusses the fundamentals of running, including equipment, nutrition, and injuries. Also provides detailed training programs for different distances and abilities.

64391203

Speed with endurance

by Bill Squires; Bruce LeHane

Book

Language: English

Publisher: Lexington, Mass. : S. Greene Press, 2004.

I would have been curious to see what Mr. Rodgers could have done if only he'd possessed some talent. Squires could have really been a great coach if only he'd have had some talent to work with...

Marathons

1973 Boston Marathon (Did not Finish)(DNF)

1973 Baystate Marathon (2:28:12) 1st Course Record (CR)

1974 Boston (2:19:34) 14th

1974 New York City Marathon (NYC) (2:36:00) 5th

1974 Philadelphia Marathon (2:21:57) 1st CR

1975 Boston (2:09:55) 1st American Record (AR)

1975 Enschede Marathon, Holland (DNF)

1975 Fukuoka Marathon (2:11:26) 3rd

1976 Olympic Trials (2:11:58) 2nd

1976 Montreal Olympics (2:25:14) 40th

1976 NYC (2:10:10) 1st CR

1976 Sedo Island, Japan (2:08:23) 1st CR (200 meters short)

1976 Maryland (2:14:28) 1st CR

1977 Kyoto, Japan (2:14:25) 1st

1977 Boston (DNF)

1977 Amsterdam, Holland (2:12:46) 1st CR

1977 Waynesboro (2:25:12) 1st

1977 NYC (2:11:28) 1st

1977 Fukuoka (2:10:55) 1st

1978 Boston (2:10:13) 1st

1978 NYC (2:12:12) 1st

1978 Fukuoka (2:12:53) 6th

1979 Boston (2:09:27) 1st AR

1979 Montreal (2:22:12) 15th

1979 NYC (2:11:42) 1st

1980 Boston (2:12:11) 1st

1980 Toronto (2:14:47) 1st

1980 NYC (2:13:20) 5th

1981 Houston-Tennaco (2:12:10) 1st CR

1981 Boston (2:10:34) 3rd

1981 Atlantica-Boavista, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2:14:13) 1st CR

1981 Stockholm, Sweden (2:13:28) 1st

1981 Bank One, Columbus, OH (2:17:34) 7th

1982 Houston (2:14:51) 5th

1982 Tokyo (2:24) 301st

1982 Boston (2:12:38) 4th

1982 Atlantica-Boavista, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (DNF)

1982 Melbourne, Australia (2:11:08) 1st

1983 Orange Bowl, FL (2:15:08) 1st

1983 Boston (2:11:58) 10th

1983 Beijing, China (DNF)

1983 Chicago (2:21:40)

1984 U.S. Olympic Trials (2:13:31) 8th

1985 New Jersey Waterfront (2:14:46) 2nd

1985 NYC (2:15:31) 7th

1986 Boston (2:13:35) 4th

1986 Chicago (2:15:31) 11th

1987 Phoenix (DNF)

1987 Boston (2:18:18) 15th

Before Beardsley ever met Squires or had any contact with him whatsoever, he had run 2:16:01 as a 24 year old at the 1980 Olympic Marathon Trials. Beardsley was not coached at the time and was simply running without any guidance. Beardsley was incredibly talented.

Good answer. I think also he was mainly known as a marathon coach whereas the others coached other distances and therefore attracted more attention. Also, it may be seen by many that marathon coaching is more straight forward than coaching other events and thus once again did not generate as much interest.I read your last comment regarding comparisons with other coaches. I actually prefer the Squires approach in some ways. Although I do like the long reps short rec, short reps long recovery you mentioned regarding Lydiard. Did Squires have much success with middle distance runners?He may not have been a self promoter - he's making up for it now :)

I'm going ti tag into Hodgie-san's answer and modify my response to say that to those of us of a certain vintage Squires was very well known but it was mostly because we were constantly seeing these tremendous performances coming from Greater Boston guys we'd never heard of and then learned that Squires coached them. But he did slip out of view by 1990 or so and I think is less known among younger runners than many other coaches.

Again, going with my memories of those years, we always thought of GBTC as a marathoners/road runners club. I know that their guys did some track racing, Rodgers was 4th at the 10,0000 OT Trial, and you'd see some results from GBTC guys at indoor meets, but it was on the roads that they made their name. They didn't have the impact on the track that the Florida or Oregon Track Clubs did.

And I really don't see anything self=promotional at work here

. Running Times came to Bill. It's not like he wrote the article himself and sent it to them.

jesse was a friend wrote:

Before Beardsley ever met Squires or had any contact with him whatsoever, he had run 2:16:01 as a 24 year old at the 1980 Olympic Marathon Trials. Beardsley was not coached at the time and was simply running without any guidance. Beardsley was incredibly talented.

Okay, I don't want to sound like yet another "angry" voice but let me try to get this straight; so Beards ran 2:16 before he met Coach Sauires and ran 2:08 and that makes Squires a lousy coach? And because Rodgers had a long brilliant career (thanks to Coach Squires) and that proves Rodgers was "talented" so that makes Squires a lousy coach? And, as someone else already pointed out, because someone wrote an article about him, and as far as I can remember, there was one other article about Coach in RT about 10 years ago and one other one in Marathon & Beyond a few years back, he's a egomaniac? So basically, one way or the other, you want to label him as a lousy coach and egomaniac. I can count at least a half a dozen people you should spend time on "policing" around than Coach Sauires.

If you ever have a chance to chat with Alberto Salazar, ask him how many times he flew Coach Squires out to Portland and consulted him how he's doing with his own coaching. Ah, sorry; Salazar was talented because he ran fast in high school; all his runners are talented so that doesn't mean anything to prove Squires to be a good coach...

Just an honest question, if he was so hard to understand, how did you people who were coached by him follow his instructions? Was it a bit hit or miss at times, or did you learn his ways quickly? Thanks.

Captain Kangaroo wrote:

Just an honest question, if he was so hard to understand, how did you people who were coached by him follow his instructions? Was it a bit hit or miss at times, or did you learn his ways quickly? Thanks.

Perhaps I have made him out to be more inscrutable than he really was/is.

Most workouts the instruction was really very simple and after months and years of doing them together we knew what the pattern was.

He was also open to suggestion and no workout was etched in stone. I remember him occasionally pulling people out of workouts if he didn't like what he was seeing.

You struggle with reading comprehension. Where did I write anything about Squires being a "lousy" coach. I choose not to insult you further, but you MUST learn to read with understanding in order to engage in written discussion...The egomaniac part speaks for itself.

You know, reading ONE sentence that a person spoke during an interview and deciding that you can tell what sort of character that person has seems just a tad on the egomaniacal side itself. Does the word "projection" mean anything to you?

HRE wrote:

Does the word "projection" mean anything to you?

Does the word "projection" mean anything to you ?

You are the person that shows more projection on this board. Every one of your posts is so self centered, so egomaniac.

if you look deeply, the main reason of your Nobby or wetcoast posts on this board it´s because Squires comments on your immaculate coach.

coach master wrote:

if you look deeply, the main reason of your Nobby or wetcoast posts on this board it´s because Squires comments on your immaculate coach.

????

Anyone that has ever met Coach Squires would never call him an egomaniac. Only those that don't understand him could possibly perceive him as anything but genuine.

My perception of Coach Squires is that he is bright and willing to share his knowledge. He has been incredibly gracious to me and I look forward to heading to Boston every year to pick his brain. And YES he is a character. I think that his quirkiness only adds to his ability to communicate with others.

I am an admitted running nerd, so when I listen to Coach Squires speak< I am in the learning mode, rather than the critic.

The entire "talent" argument is dependent upon your background. If a coach ever told me that I have talent, I would consider it a put down. I would like to think that anything that I achieved was done on hardwork and not talent. The goal is to always beat those that are more talented. If you are the most talented, then you are supposed to win. There is no fun or sense of fulfillment in that.

I interpreted Coach Squires in just that fashion. Something like "Hey guys/gals, you are not as talented as the people that you are running against, in order to beat them, we need to train smarter, harder, and tougher." I think it is a great approach. His teams then never relied on being more talented than the opposition, they worked harder, smarter. Whether it was true or not is unimportant. What is important is that he was able to convince his athletes of this and they then worked harder than others. Or at least gained the confidence from feeling like they were working harder.

I am fairly certain that Coach Squires doesn't read this stuff, but if for some reason he does, I want to say thanks for what you have taught me.

Kevin Hanson

Hansons-Brooks Distance Project

You ask for an explanation and then dismiss it. Even when it comes from another very successful coach. The MIRACLE ON ICE occurred because a coach convinced his athletes that talent is unimportant. I appreciate Mr. Hanson's explanation.

You must feel pretty important to have some huge names in the sport talking to you?

The start of this thread makes this statement,

"The quote on the front page proves that Squires is delusional and drowning in self aggrandizement."

And the thread subject has the words "Raging Egomaniac"

It wouldn't be much fun if he were "humble and soft spoken" would it?

The workouts would not have been so entertaining. He should have had a TV Reality talent show. Can you imagine what he might do? What he might have the contestant do? Simulators or was it simulators?

Tom

I read the article and then immediately bought his book. He sounds like quite a character and a great coach. I want to hear some more Bill Squires stories from his athletes.