Why don't more top runners train like Lagat?

From what I have seen about his training (granted I cannot find much information around on Jame's Li's coaching methods), although he does not run "huge" mileage, his build-up phases do seem to be focused largely on aerobic development with a fair amount of tempo running at fastish but definitely relaxed speeds for someone of Lagat's ability. There was also not much focus at all on "intense" interval sessions. This in itself is a sort of "Lydiard" approach.

When seeing the work outlined for his specific racing preparation, he does challenging but definitely not killer track workouts in terms of intensity or volume and he seems to focus on just 2 "intense" workouts per week. My guess is that he has managed to find his sweet spot of training and has just kept doing the same things throughout his long career and feeling good.

The dude hammers his "easy runs". That's why he doesn't run more volume and why he sucked at his one attempt at the half marathon. Consistent performer, but his ceiling is limited by how he trains.

How does someone have a positive A sample but not a positive B? It's the same urine sample split into two containers. I don't get this unless it was some sort of cover-up/someone paid off.

The other guy! wrote:

There is a reason Lagat trains in Germany/Tuebingen most of the time. Faaaaaaaar away from USADA.

Knowledge of the World Anti-Doping Code and relationships between NADOs would allow you to realize that geographical proximity to one's own NADO doesn't matter much, and certainly not when your NADO is USADA.

gum on the ceiling wrote:

How does someone have a positive A sample but not a positive B? It's the same urine sample split into two containers. I don't get this unless it was some sort of cover-up/someone paid off.

Because the sample wasn't kept at the proper low temperature.

When the urine sample is kept at a higher temperature, enzymes naturally occuring in your urine can cause the EPO in your urine that's produced by your kidneys to look more like synthetic EPO on the test.

The test is read like this:

And on Lagat's improperly stored sample, the markers looked somewhere in between negative and a solid positive, which was read as a positive test.

But under proper storage methods, the B sample showed no markers of synthetic EPO (just normal EPO, which counters the argument made on here that he dropped protease in his urine, which would have wiped out all EPO, natural or otherwise).

Read the report here

All these replies to a thread about Lagat's training and not one person can definitively tell me how Lagat trains?

How does someone have a positive A sample but not a positive B? It's the same urine sample split into two containers. I don't get this unless it was some sort of cover-up/someone paid off.[/quote]

Exactly! but for some reason people choose to believe in the tooth fairy and think that hes clean and give some BS excuses. Oh and by they way, Ma was really giving the chinese turtle blood and not drugs, Lashawn Merrit got busted because he took extenze, Mary decker got busted because of birth control, and Tyson Gay was busted because of a citrus energy drink. Get real people. wake up

Lagat's false positive has been explained to death for 10 years. Believe the explanation or don't, but there's nothing more that can be said about it. Yes, there is such a thing as a false positive.

Why do people think Lagat's training is so unusual? I doubt it's too different from similar runners like Kiprop, Centrowitz, or Lomong. He was a pure 1500 guy in his prime, later moving up to 1500/5000, but never raced anything longer.

yyy wrote:

the key word here is "supposedly"

Right. I'm responding to what I've seen written here about what Lagat does knowing that reports may not be accurate.

I used what the world's best were doing as a model for myself. Those people had already proven what worked. All I'm doing when I write about what I did is pointing out that the principles are the same whether you were a 4:10 high school miler or a 6:10 one and the same things will work in either case though though generally your starting point will have some affect on your end point.

A better question might be why Lagat doesn't train like most other top runners do, assuming that he really doesn't, which may or may not be the case. That's not necessarily saying that he should or shouldn't train like other top runners and there may be reasons for him not to. But if you're looking to do well at something it's not a good idea to use an outlier as your role model.

Lagat's training is not unusual for a runner of his type. I have no idea why you think he and Lawang are lying to everyone about their training, either.

The training works for some people. It probably wouldn't work for you, but you aren't a runner with the raw speed of Lagat.

HRE isn't saying that Lalang or Lagat lie about their training. He's saying that certain things are said about their training here and elsewhere(mileage, intensity, etc) that haven't really been backed up by anything definitive. When there's a multipage thread about a man's training without so much as a sample week, I have to wonder if a lot of it is imagination.

I've never seen a "How They Train" description of Lagat's training, only second hand descriptions of it here at Letsrun and a very general description from a friend who knows James Li. There seems to be a general consensus here about what Lagat does and that seems to be the basis of this thread. I'm not saying anyone is lying but ideas can change in the retelling.

At any rate, assuming what we've read here about Lagat's training is fairly accurate, I would say that what he does wouldn't work for most people more because they don't have his cardiovascular system than because they don't have his speed. Mileage develops cardiovascular fitness but athletes who come to the sport with a really good aerobic system may not need the volume most of us do. On the other hand, we have loads of sub 50 quarter milers in the US who are not going to run 13:00 for 5,000 meters even if they spend years running 50-60 mpw.

Because his coach says he wants to increase Rupp's mileage gradually.

Because he's not as talented at that distance. His best mile/1500 is about 7 seconds slower than Lagat's.

The point was that they all run higher volume than Lagat -- at least 30% higher.

Unlikely. Training methods have advanced a bit since 1964.

Irrelevant.

one has to wonder why it wasn't kept at the correct temperature. Are there no protocols to follow????

Another idiot. The kind of guy that early produce questions and lately knows not just tehr answer to his own questions as he knows more than those that try to answer the questions.

What an idiot.

But HRE is near to that position. In his first post of this board he answer the question , gives his opinion about Lagat, but on te next posts we knew that he doesn´t know what Bernard Lagat training precisely. If he doesn´t know how can he answer the question so sententious. He can´t. But he did. In tne process the only fair conclusion is that HRE uses his own ignorance to answer the question.

However i don´t need to be an expert in psychology to know why he tried to answer this one abou Lagat. it´s because causes him trouble that such a good runner isn´t a Lydiard one.

António Cabral wrote:

Another idiot. . .

What an idiot. . . blah, more abuse, blah . . .

Geez, Antonio, I know the culture here is nasty and brutish, but you seem to have assimilated a little too well.

Easy, friend, easy.

You're sort of right. In a way this whole thread is stupid because none of us knows for sure what Lagat does. There is a general belief that it's short and pretty fast for the most part, I've read that he only runs once a day for example, and that seems to be what we're all responding to but without confirmation, including you, I'm betting. Or do you actually know specifically what Lagat does and if so could you tell us?

No, Lagat himself has said as much many times. He runs fast, not long. It works for him. I love the conspiracy theorists on these threads who want to believe that Lagat (and Coe) are secretly running 150miles a week but have engaged in a massive cover up to fool the world.

He runs about 70 mi a week, with lots of it at 4:30 pace. He was extensively quoted last year or the year before saying that the Kenyans burn brightly but burn out because of the twice daily tempos at sub 5.Seems to me he has proven his point over and over. Now Lalang seems to be doing ok on the same program.

On the other hand, an awful lot of guys have tried the 100mile a week route without success, and of course the 100 or more group has had lots of success as well. So, as someone said earlier on, it works for him and probably the 100 mile approach wouldnt work.

Decades ago there was a Runner's World article about Mike Boit. The author mentioned that Boit asked him to do a 6 mile run one day. He wrote that they ran maybe 4-5 miles at what for the author was quick but manageable pace and ended up at a track where Boit proceeded to run 6 miles in about a half hour. THAT was the six mile run Boit was talking about. Most of us would count that as 10-11 miles but to Boit it was 6.

We always heard that Prefontaine trained at 70-80 miles a week. Charlie Maguire, a Penn State All American who raced against Prefontaine told me that one year he spent four days living with Prefontaine in his trailer. "I did exactly what he did for those four days," Maguire told me, "and in those four days I ran 60 miles. Do you really think that in the three days after I left Prefontaine only ran a total of 10-20 miles? I think what's going on is that Oregon's runners don't count their morning runs in their totals"

It's not that there are conspiracy theorists as much as recognition that people have their own ways of reporting what they do or what they've observed others do. If Lagat says he runs 6 miles on an easy day at a good pace there is no reason to believe that he's not mentioning a couple miles of warming up or cooling down. But there's also nothing that says he's not doing that.

Years after Coe retired his father sent a letter to Track and Field News saying that they had actually put quite a lot of emphasis on aerobic training and that Seb actually had run a lot more miles than people thought he'd done.