Why don't more top runners train like Lagat?

I just post so many times about my opinion in this question, why 800m runners don´t get special benefit from threshold intervals. Search my posts and you will find more detail about this matter.

This thread proves that denial aint just a river in Egypt.

If a world class runner says they run 60-75 mpw max the mileage hogs on here will decide for themselves that the person is lying and not counting mileage or what not.

Just accept that everyone does not need 100mpw to be good. Just like some people have to work their @ss off to lose weight, some people dont have to work very hard to achieve athletic excellence.

I can't speak for anyone else in this thread but I don't think anyone is lying about their training. My only concern is to be sure that perception matches up with reality and that there's not just some line being repeated over and over again. "Lagat doesn't run high mileage". You know what that can mean to someone without context? There are high school kids who legitimately believe that Bernard Lagat never runs over 30 per week. And then there are people who say that Lagat doesn't work hard. Hard running, and the benefit he gets from it, is why he doesn't have to run higher mileage. The bottom line, at least for me, is to give context to "Lagat doesn't run high mileage" in order to prevent the kinds of misconceptions that led people to believe Seb Coe was doing 40 miles per week and then completely fail at running because they try to apply that to their training without the correct knowledge.

Here is the most important thing that I hope everyone can agree on. Everyone is a little different and it takes years of trial and error to figure out what works for you.

Lagat

1500m WR + 0 seconds

5000m WR + 17 seconds

10000m WR + infinity

/thread

I know you don't have attorney for Renato, just like you don't for Lydiard, HRE, or Hadd for that matter. I guess we can discuss what they wrote though.Sometimes yes, sometimes no. A linear/non-linear relation ship is not interesting -- the question is about statistical distribution. What do "MORE top runners" require to perform their best? The same mileage/intensity as Lagat, or more mileage/less intensity?

Antonio Cabral wrote:

Renato Canova posts many times here on thsi board. This kind of question about him ask him. I got no attorney to answer by Renato what he thinks about any matter.

About training, every training stimulus is stimulus=volume (mileage) versus intensity (pace). Sometimes more mileage might resuly i less stimulus if you decrease the pace and vice versa, if you decrease the mileage but faster the pace the stimulus of training is high.

Ther´s not a linear relation that more mileage is more training charge, or more aerobic stimulus, or that lead to more aerobic enhance necessarly.

HRE, stop it, you are killing me. When I enter a race and Cam Levins happens to be in it, I don't say "I raced against Cam Levins."

HRE wrote:

..........I also raced against Viren a few times in 1975.........s.

rekrunner wrote:

Well this thread asked about "top runners", so marathoners weren't excluded.

Are there more examples than Webb? Seems to me that Lagat is a kind of exception to the rule.

Is it better to limit the question to middle distance top runners?

It confuses the question, because the training requirements are pretty different between championship 5ks and marathons. But as far as people training similarly to Lagat at longer distances, I believe Yuki Kawauchi's training is mostly in singles and not much above 80 miles a week.

A poster named Ghost posted a bunch of examples of low mileage elite/semi-elite runners' training in this thread:

Read that article on Lagat. After the season he takes 5 weeks off. His first run back, a 30 minute "jog" may leave him short of breath. By week 3, he can do a 10 mile "jog" in 55 minutes.

1) His natural capacity is much greater than most people and certainly higher than schmos on here who doubt his mileage and

2) He trains at a MUCH faster pace than you do

If you were in a race with Levins why would you not say you raced against him?

yeah a number of good runners, like Karel Lismont if I remember correctly. he was a 2:12 guy or so. Competitive

in the 70s but not today. What could he have done with more than 1h/day??

You never see a 2:08 guy with this low mileage.

1h/day may get you 98% of the way and is good if you are not running professionally. But if you want to be a world-beater

it just doesn't quite cut it.

Low Mileage

Lagat - 0 world records, 0 olympic gold medals

High Mileage

Haile gebrselassie - 27 world records, 2 olympic gold medals

someone had to do it wrote:

Low Mileage

Lagat - 0 world records, 0 olympic gold medals

High Mileage

Haile gebrselassie - 27 world records, 2 olympic gold medals

Lagat- still competing, and could probably do damage in the 10k if he really cared (dont think he does)

Geb- done

ataglance. wrote:

This thread proves that denial aint just a river in Egypt.

If a world class runner says they run 60-75 mpw max the mileage hogs on here will decide for themselves that the person is lying and not counting mileage or what not.

The individual that catches his training or lies about it is not a wealth person. he got a sick mind. The individual that doesn´t trust what the other says without any substantial reason to not trust is another kind of sick mind.

I told this story once but i gonna tell it another time. Some years ago, one representative of Lydiard foundation send me the Peter Snell training schedule by teh coach Lydiard on the road to Tokyo 64 olympics. He ask me to keep it private what i did. He told that the schedule got 2 columns. One it was the Snell daily training schedule that was published on Run to the Top book.But aide by side on that column was another column with alight different training and the Lydiard representative individual said that the other column that´s what Snell did really. I trust on that Lydiard representative that he said the truth. Then my question was, why the schedule that is publish is not the real training. Since that the Lydiard representative ask me to keep it private and not reveal the real training schedule, what i did respect till today, i still ask myself why the real schedule wasn´t published and another fictional - not very different however - was the published.

However ther´s another problem with the kind of "how they train" digest. The problem is that most of the times they take the best period of training as the more representative and the one with high meaning, when really it doesn´t.

I remember that some people says "i did 120miles", but isn´t average weekly mileage, is the best training. Another occasion someone says that he did 400m intervals in 58seconds but the 58 it was just the 2 faster among 15 intervals total !

How many times the runner and the coach they planned one week and for any circumstance the runners doesn´t what is planned. I read that Peter Snell couldn´t do the 100miles in his early years of training due to injury. On another occasion we watch in that video that Peter Snell gave up to run the weekly long run an couldn´t stand that one long run.

But for some, Peter Snell training is 100miles precisely during the build up season phase in every season of his career and folks they think that he did the 1000miles typical from the first week of be with Lydiard just to the last week of his training career. The reality is that the 100miles training wasn´t done by Lydiard boys always and ever during the build up phase. What a nonsense and untruth.

Do i need to say the same thing again, on and on about Renato ?

Renato Canova it´s not one saint or perfect individual. But if ther´s someone that i respect in the world of athletics is him, Renato Canova. He knows everything about training, and i consider him a Sage. But the main reason why i respect him is not because he is a great coach, that he is indeed,or because he got high coach success.

The main reason why i respect him is because his own temper, his own strong character. I repeat. On the athletic scene that i´m in contact more than 40 years ago i´ve deal with many people, and i did relationship with many but Renato is on the top of my admiration not because his training method but mostly because his character.

Because i admire his training and his character i got some responsibility that in one occasion he comes to Portugal to present his training ideas. It happens in Porto in 2008.

Therefore, in public or media and about Renato Canova training i just comment directly with him, or might i comment in private with my friends, but not with you or any poster. I respect him too much to be to the public media to debate about his training, About his training or what he says i try to debate with him. If i would need i contact with him.

haha wrote:

someone had to do it wrote:

Low Mileage

Lagat - 0 world records, 0 olympic gold medals

High Mileage

Haile gebrselassie - 27 world records, 2 olympic gold medals

Lagat- still competing, and could probably do damage in the 10k if he really cared (dont think he does)

Geb- done

Geb's quite a bit older, and he's had by far the more successful career.

Personally I prefer if you don't say the same thing again, on and on.

I really didn't ask any question about Renato, so I'm not expecting any response from you about Renato.

What I did ask you is if you had any examples of other "top runners" who did the same low mileage as Lagat -- since you seemed to somehow disagree that "most runners found they needed higher mileage".

I'm really just trying to get a statistical sense if runners like Lagat should be the rule, or the exception, or if it's 50-50. That seems to be the main question here.

I raced against Grete Waitz. She won.

HRE wrote:

If you were in a race with Levins why would you not say you raced against him?

rekrunner wrote:

I raced against Grete Waitz. She won.

[/quote]

She was the best....so missed.