Actually, it's funny, this coach is having his athletes do at least as much, if not more, quality/speed than most coaches.
To wit:
"“When you think about it, hills are really speed work in disguise. We do hills every other day, and on days when we don’t do hills we do strides (8 x 30 seconds). We are getting ‘speed,’ but in different form.
And they race a LOT (sometimes doing multiple races).
So hilly runs 3 days a week, where they push the up-hills (this is not much different than fartlek style training, or a more regimented workout of 45sec-1 minute "pickups" that has been the bread and butter of many runners, and which absolutely should still be considered quality/fast/speed training), and 3 days a week of doing essentially 8 x 200 at the end of long workout, AND lots of races.
That's a lot of quality and speed. So what's the big difference? Not actually being on the track? Okay. Not actually trying to hit specific times? Okay. Sure, that's a little different, but not as big a difference as they contend, and certainly not an "all base/zero interval", or all-endurance/zero-quality/speed program like they are acting like it is (unless "base" training means, well anything you want it to mean). PLenty of good runners use HR monitors instead of paces to measure quality intervals, and others go by feel. Hey, Bob Schul did (virtually) zero timed intervals before he won the 5k gold in '64. Sure, he ran 100m-200m repeats by feel with no watch all day long, but yeah, let's call that a "no interval" program too.