Not Cool Bro wrote:
You bring up an interesting question though and I don't have the answer. It's basically the "Alan Webb question". Would he have had a better pro career if he hadn't done the training to run 3:53 in HS? Most seem to agree that the intense training got him to 3:53 as well as his AR as a pro, but in the end hurt his chances at a longer career that might have yielded better finishes at a global championship. Hard to know though.
Webb did not train "intensely". It may have seemed like that to you, because his training by definition would be faster than every other miler ever besides those very few that ran as fast as him (Ryun, Liquori, Lindgren, etc. ...) or nearly as fast as him.
He ran low mileage by anyone's standard, didn't run twice a day, and had very normal mainstream interval workouts (for a runner who ran 4:20, 4:07y, ~4:02, 3:53y over 4 years).
He was the 4th fastest HS 800m runner in history in 2001, of course he was going to train faster than nearly everyone ever did. But this doesn't mean it was more intense than the average American HS runner.
I would say that Jim Ryun trained "intensely", perhaps more intensely than his peers, perhaps more than anybody. If you know a little about that, it is markedly different than the typical training was later in the '70s, '80s, '90s or beyond. He had the very rare situation to have the same coach for 7 or 8 uninterrupted years from 10th grade until college was over.
SIDENOTE:
Your idea reminds me of how people say that the best marathoners from 30 yrs ago (Lopes, Jones, Salazar, Seko, etc. - those who ran 2:07-2:08 or so) and even 40 yrs ago could never run 2:04 like today's best ...
because they don't have the "speed" or the "leg speed".
It doesn't take any greater leg speed to run 2:04 than it took for Lopes and Jones to run low-2:07 ... they just didn't have the same drugs available today. Given the SAME drugs as today's top runners running 2:03-2:05, the best of the distant past (Bikila, Shorter, Clayton, Drayton, and then later Salazar, Lopes, DeCastella, Jones, etc. ...) would have run 2:05-2:06 for the 2:10-2:11 guys and the ones who showed 2:07-2:08 ability on record-eligible courses would run 2:03:00-2:05:00 under today's conditions easily.