Bump.
Bump.
Would you happen to have an email?
Why?
Jim Beatty also held the world two mile records both indoor and outdoor.
I had left Igloi and in early 1966 was running in the weekend road races and doing fairly well (top 4-6). I did not know anyone in the LA road racing fraternity, but one Sunday a guy came over and introduced himself before the race.
"Hi, I'm Bruce Dern. I was reading some old Long Distance Logs last night and you ran some really good times back East."
It had been 4 years since I ran those times and no one had heard of me since then, so I was surprised. I had no idea who Bruce was, but he turned out to be a great guy. He told a bunch of us some great stories about the making of the movie The Wild Angels.
There are too few of us left, and we are all too old.
Igloi training
Su a 4km p 15 x 150 w 70 after
M 10 12 km with sprints interspersed
Tu a 4 km p 15 x 100 sprints, 15 x 150 fast. 10 x 400 , 15 x 150 fast. 15 x 100 equal jogs
W A 4km p 20 x 200, 2 x 800, 15 x 150 fast, 6 - 8 x 100m sprints equal jog after each
Th a 4 km easy p 20 x 100 sprints, 5 x 400, 10 - 15 x 100 sprints, 15 x 150 fast, 5 x 400 equal jogs
Fa 4 km easy p 8 km steady, 20 x100 sprints 100 rec.
Sa a 4 km p 10 x 2000m easy w 400 jog
Could this work from 800 to marathon?
I ran under Coach Igloi from summer 1967 through 1970, with a six month break as I was recovering from mononucleosis summer 1969 through year end. I was 16 years old and a 4:56 miler when I started running under him, a year later 4:23 mile, and 9:27 2 mile. I wrote the attached article for Track and Field Quarterly Review mid-1980s, and followed a presentation at the NCAA Meet the previous season. The article covers my interpretation of his training system, and covers my 1970 season starting with zero running prior to January 1, 1970 and ends with Igloi’s departure August 1970. The photo is from his last workout in the United States.
Thank you for sharing. Did you do similar training for Boston and your 30K AR ?
Thanks. Similar under Coach Joe Douglas. The addition, and a good one, was tempo runs on the road before, and sometimes additionally after an interval session.
Gotcha, it can certainly change the characteristics of a session. Good way to race "harden". I imagine. Seems to me the stuff Igloi did was train to race rather than train to train. I am assuming Douglas the same way. Am I mistaken I thought I read somewhere Igloi had a degree in exercise physiology?
Such a great article! A user on another thread some months back was asking about this article and I forwarded a copy sent over 3 years ago. Glad people are still discussing Igloi's methods and his great disciples are sharing the information.
A couple of other points, one is Igloi’s use of cadence, which I discussed in the article. He would address individually what he saw as flaws in form. Also, large amounts of volume were not under a watch, especially in preparation periods. It is my understanding he did have a degree in exercise physiology and studied for a time under Gershler.
In regards to Douglas, the tempo runs were on the road, and given as “30 minutes fresh,” or at the tail end of intervals “20 minutes fresh.” At the time, I would say this was about 5:15-5:30 pace, but this was not over set distances. On these days I typically had a morning session of 6-8 miles intervals, and the afternoon sandwich of tempo-intervals-tempo was another 15-20 miles. For both Igloi and Douglas I had afternoon sessions that took up to three hours to complete. Many times the last guy to finish. Durability was my greatest asset, and they both tested my limits.
Good people, life changing for me.
Thank you. Our connection came at a time in my life when I needed direction. “Must have big goals.”
Each year I get requests for copies. Many via this site, thus my decision to post it today. Many of the requests come from foreign coaches. In the 1990s I was invited to a coaching clinic in Mexico City, my presentation was on Igloi’s methods, from my perspective. There was a great deal of interest by the predominantly Latin American attendees.
SteepleDude wrote:
well, i have been following this thread since it started. i met with a former coach of mine today and talked to him for a while specifically about Mihaly Igloi. my former coach ran for Igloi for a few months. when you get to the part about Mt Sac, he is competing against Bobby Seamen (sp) from UCLA who was being coached by Igloi at the time. my coach was not under Igloi's methods at the time.
notes from the interview:
Mihaly Igloi
August 6, 2007
Background: the conditions in Hungary were conducive to his style of training. Communist regime, with a lot of snow, barely any track facilities and no trails. They would take a snow plow and plow off 200m of snow on the airfield.
Philosophy: anyone can run world record pace for any given distance (800m through marathon) for a given amount of time. The idea is to teach the athlete to run that pace without stopping for the duration of the event.
“Countless runners would fall by the wayside. I was one of them. The cartilage in my knee gave out after several weeks of high intensity training.” Igloi was famous for his athletes running international caliber times within 3 months of training. Usually, 5-6 out of 10 athletes would break from his training, but the ones that didn’t break, were the ones who ran well.
Some of the athletes that he coached include: Laslo Tabori, Jim Beatty, Tracy Smith, Jerry Brady (Chaffey College, 1:50 800m and 47 400m). Brady broke down.
1952 or 1956 olympics he and other Hungarians went to Melbourne, but never went home. They came to the US. Igloi settled in Santa Clara, CA (close to San Jose) and founded the Santa Clara Youth Village. Later, he started the LA track club in the early ‘60’s.
Typical training looked followed an every other day model. Didn’t really care what happened during the days he didn’t see you. Mondays and Wednesday s were high intensity—we’d run 3+ sets of 20x100m or 200m. “how fast?” “Sprint!!”
“we worked out twice a day, same type of training each time. In spikes. “‘what do you race in? well, that’s what you practice in.’” mornings workouts were about 5:30 or 6am, and then again in the late afternoon; Mondays and wed’s. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, “what do you want me to do? Do you want me to run?” “I don’t care, whatever you feel like.”
He taught his athletes to depend on him 100%.
At the Mt. Sac relays, I raced one of his athletes, Bobby Seamen (sp?), a 4:04 miler. Bobby came up to me before the race started and said, “I have to run x pace for the first 3 laps. The final lap it doesn’t matter. I have to go through ¾ in this time. I passed him with 300 yards to go, and won the race. Igloi didn’t care about all the sweaters, watches and dishes we got when we won races like that. I needed that stuff so I ran to win.”
A couple of corrections:
1. The Santa Clara Valley Youth Village was founded in 1944 to combat juvenile deliquency. They offered some sponsorship to Igloi in 1958-59.
2. Bobby Seaman ran 4:01.4 while at UCLA. He ran 3:58 with Igloi.
I believe that is a misreading. It probably read 359N55 as Lazlo ran 3:59 in 1955.
BazylP wrote:
Orville.
Interesting that you don't recall Igloi talking about diet and nutrition considering he was fastidious about prescribing his training sessions. Mind you, although nutrition can be a contributing factor to success, training is where the biggest improvement is made.
Thanks to all the other contributors to this thread (Ghost of Igloi, Bob Schul, Ancient Runner, Bill Scobey, HRE, Tinman and everyone else who added their own little gems of information and questions).
I was there for 3 years, and Igloi never mentioned diet.
Another giver of +1 wrote:
ancient runner wrote
I thought one of Igloi's training principles was that of not having hard and easy days but rather having the athlete being able to train again with a similar effort day after day? How many elite runners these days spend 30 hours a week training?
That is an often incorrectly stated idea.
In the three years I was there, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday were easy days. Usually 40-60 minutes easy running. Once in a while, you would get a surprise on Sunday morning, such as 60 minutes easy followed by an all-out 880. :)
Ghost of Igloi
Igloi's runners DID NOT "do regular long runs every morning."
I'd have to dig out my old training logs to see what I was doing in the mornings. I have much better memory of afternoons than I do of mornings.
I do remember running loads of 100 m repeats and laps of the big field.
JohnMD1022 wrote:
Ghost of Igloi
Igloi's runners DID NOT "do regular long runs every morning."I'd have to dig out my old training logs to see what I was doing in the mornings. I have much better memory of afternoons than I do of mornings.
I do remember running loads of 100 m repeats and laps of the big field.
Unsure of the context here, and definition of long run, which for me would be 12-20 miles. My experience on easy days was 6-8 miles in the morning. Prior to a race 4 miles. As you noted some strides 12-20 x 100 meters = alternate 2 easy, 2 good speed; or some variation, occasionally hard. My recollection anyhow. More detail in my training log, which I still have.
Great interview with Steve Cram - says Jakob has no chance of WRs this year
I’m a D2 female runner. Our coach explicitly told us not to visit LetsRun forums.
Guys between age of 45 and 55 do you think about death or does it seem far away
2024 College Track & Field Open Coaching Positions Discussion
adizero Road to Records with Yomif Kejelcha, Agnes Ngetich, Hobbs Kessler & many more is Saturday