i remember that you posted about talking with Steve Jones in Boulder once about training and he told you something like he only did 6-miles or 40min or less on his "easy"-days(3x per week).Can you confirm this cause i cant find the original thread.
i remember that you posted about talking with Steve Jones in Boulder once about training and he told you something like he only did 6-miles or 40min or less on his "easy"-days(3x per week).Can you confirm this cause i cant find the original thread.
just found it:
To those interested in this topic, I will generalize and say that mileage is only part of answer. Billy Squires, coach extarordinaire of past elite marathoners, said often that it is not the miles you run but what you do with the miles. I agree. In the marathon, it is critical to do marathon specific workouts to reach one's potential. Sure running more miles raises aerobic max. capacity (up to about 75 miles per week), but Max VO2 is a horrible predictor of marathon success, particularly amongst a group of runners with similar race times. More miles, to an extent, will wipe out glycogen (stored sugar) stores thereby leaving no alternative but to use fats as a fuel source, so that is a postive effect. But, if you spread your miles out and don't do longer workouts, you will not run an equal performance in the marathon as your 10k or 5k performance would generally indicate. A friend of mine, who was trained by Jack Daniels, told me that his highest weekly mileage was 65-70 per week, and most weeks it was more like 60 per week. He ran 2:17. I was lucky enough to meet Steve Jones at the Runner's Roost in Boulder one Saturday afternoon in 1997, and he mentioned that he was in good shape, despite not doing much mileage. He said that he never took much stock in mileage but rather quality running. I asked him what that meant. To him, that meant doing either fartleks or solid aerobic runs (he used a different word, but I can't remember it. It must have been Welsh.). I said (ignorant of his previous training from his elite days in the 80s) something about Frank Shorter running 150 miles per week and he replied, yeah, that is would have been two of my weeks. A gal from Boulder who went to U of Oregon for only a year, was there too, I think she was working, and she said she ran a lot of miles, but her way of knowing when she was in shape was a hard distance run or repeat 2 mile runs. I walked away interested in finding answers to the question of miles or workouts. After a lot of talking to good runners of both genders and reading about runners from other lands and other ages, plus reading many articles, I have concluded that doing long workouts is the most important element of marathon preparation and mileage is support to those workouts. I was taken aback when I read that Steve Jones ran only 40 minutes on his easy days (3 per week), Benji Durden ran 45 minutes easy, and Kenny Moore ran 3 miles in the morning and 4 in the afternoon easy. If you take only one thing from this post, written late at night after a long work day, take this: running two long workouts per week is more important than running a bunch of miles split into two runs per day. If you can run 1.5-2.5 hours twice per week with quality included in each run, then you are going to advance your marathon endurance and strength tremendously. Some may argue this point, and that is fine, but I am sticking by my statement unless someone proves to me that long workouts are not important compared to how many miles one runs per week (for marathoning). Tinman
I think you need to get a lot closer to the original source (that is, Jonesy himself) to get an accurate idea of his training during the 1980s.
Some of the NZ crew that grew out of Lydiard's pack went
on to become coaches: Magee and Davies to name two, Snell I believe is in research.
Each agree with the 'minimum of 2-90 minute runs per week'
proviso. Barry Magee has a website that offers coaching for a nominal fee; much of the early prep involves running LONG duration. John Davies is listed in Hal Higdon's book "How to Train" which is as comprehensive a compilation of training methods I have ever seen. Not that I am promoting either, you understand, they need NO help from me.
Jones apparently developed the same idea or was trained in that fashion, Viren did two longer quality sessions weekly in his buildups, Lopes was well-known for regular quality runs as well. Anyone ever hear of Cosmas N'deti? He did 20-30km runs on hills as part of his Boston preps regularly.
When runners from different parts of the world come to the same conclusion, that should tip you off that there is some germ of truth in it: a good 90-minute effort 2x weekly will help you no matter what your distance, unless you're a sprinter.
Don't you mean Fred Wilt, coach of Buddy Edelen.
Nope, never read any of his stuff, but both he and Edelin were monsters in their day. Edelin died recently, alas.
Edelin held the US marathon record in the early 60's if I am not mistaken. Wilt was a 5K or under man, again, if memory serves me right.
Edelin's training was outlined in Tim Noakes' first edition of "The Lore of Running" which is a damn encyclopedia. Heck of a book, and did double duty for me as a paperweight and doorstop. My copy was loaned out to someone, with all its' scribbling in the margin and dog-eared pages, and may well be in the hands of a 3rd or 4th party by now. LOL.