I met Ben True. Here are some interesting things I learned.

DaveF wrote:

Very interesting and I think what he's doing is great and he's still making good progress.

However on the shoe thing, thats not true at all. I've seen him do workouts in the fastwich 6, watch the 6X1mile workout with him on flotrack. By the looks of his shoe rotation hes running in the triumph or kinvara on easy days, tempo/longer intervals in the fastwich and then the real fast stuff in Endorphin MD4's which he also races in for 5000m and down, on the roads hes using the Type A6. Just from what I've seen, I'm also a Saucony athlete. Not at the same tier of a guy like Ben obviously haha, but I follow along with the Saucony team and get the product lines to try. He's using stability for a couple of those models

I said that he runs long stuff in the Triumph and does workouts in the fast twitch, didn't I? You're right about the A6, another poster pointed out that what I thought was the "85" was probably actually the A5.

Cool Cool! My bad, I didn't catch that. Awesome you got to pick his brain. Great overall athlete. He's a big guy for a runner too! 6'2 or there abouts.

Ho Hum wrote:

Running Formula reader wrote:

Who said only "very high rep bodyweight exercises" were core works? Are you still living in the 20th century?

That's certainly what I see people doing when they say they're doing core work. What are you talking about? -- I'm not being facetious, I'm really curious what you mean.

That's a very uninformed argument. I have never heard anyone say high rep bw exercises were core work. you could make the argument that people doing planks and calling that core work. But the reality is someone working their core could be doing squats or deadlifts or ANY exercise that utilizes the muscles of the back, side and front of the trunk, and hip matrix. On another note, if you are also trying to say high rep exercises are useless the maybe you should read up on tudor bompa.

DaveF wrote:

Cool Cool! My bad, I didn't catch that. Awesome you got to pick his brain. Great overall athlete. He's a big guy for a runner too! 6'2 or there abouts.

Yeah I just realized you were replying to someone else speculating about his shoes, my bad too. You're right about his size, it's crazy to think he was even bigger when he was skiing for Dartmouth!

Dreams --> Reality wrote:

Yuppie Runner wrote:

Ben True already is Letsrun's Great White Hope (excluding awkward Galen Rupp)

Fixed. Not counting Yuki Kawauchi of course.

Fixed again.

I find it interesting and amazing that this thread has stayed relatively civil.

If this thread were about a woman, by the end of page 1 it would have deteriorated into a useless conversation about how hot she is, or who made out with her in high school.

Congrats LetsRun community, lets try to keep that up.

Also, Ben is one of the best guys out there. Super old school, but he definitely sleeps in an altitude tent.

Did he go home DEVASTATED from the 2012 Olympic Trials?

This article is from a year and a half ago and it looks like he has lost a LOT of weight. He says in the article he was 165 now wikipedia is saying 146.

HERE:

http://www.runnersworld.com/elite-runners/big-ben?page=single

IF both of those are true, he has lost nearly 20 lbs. No wonder he went from 13:20ish/27:41 to 13:02.

I would be careful about drawing conclusions about people's beliefs or even their training, unless they specifically tell you "I don't do core training because I think it is worthless for distance running." I would try not to read too much into a talk like that.

Also, you can't really use someone like Ben True as an example of WHY or WHY NOT core training works. HE is one in about 1000 of elite distance runners who were also elite at skiing.

It is similar to using Lagat as an example of why/how low-mileage training is "better". How would we know? Unless he was able to re-do his life and train at a higher volume from say age 18-30 ... how do we really know?

Also, for every Ben True who may not do core exercises (for whatever reason that is) there are runners who do. Fro every Lagat who runs 60-70 or whatever it is, there are 100 who run 100-150.

I'm also very interested in the foot and lower leg strengthening excersizes.

Bump for any info on the foot strengthening routine?

Peter Corrigan wrote:

Also, Ben...definitely sleeps in an altitude tent.

I pasted a link to a commercial site that contradicts the OP's information, and you are contradicting the OP's information as well.

OP, did you hear True correctly?