Craig Virgin: High School training?

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details wrote:

In the NXN thread Craig Virgin said he would answer questions about his high school career, and I decided I would start the thread. So Craig, what did you do differently in training compared to kids today? What do you see as the key to your early success? I'd love to hear any details about your training or school that you think are important or worth mentioning!

Ok, Details, never done this before but I will give it a shot. I will just focus on H.S. here based on your request. First of all, many young people here are probably thinking "who or what is Craig Virgin and why should I care?" There is bio stuff out there.... but I can say that I had a fairly remarkable H.S. career with PR's of 52, 1:53, 4:05.5, 8:40.9, 13:36.8 all for events in yards. I also ran 3000 in 8:10 and 5000 in 13:58.2 over in Europe in late July. I was still age 17 for all those times. My senior year I ran the 3-mile Illinois State X-C Meet in 13:50.6 to beat my record of 13:59.3 set the year before. I'm a bit shocked that it still stands but Jon Davis took a good shot at it last month running 13;59.3. Chris Derrick has come the closest and it even withstood Lukas Verzbicas' assault a few years back (and it was only goal Lukas never achieved his senior year as he went on to win NXN and FL that Dec. as well as sub 4:00 and sub 8:30). I ran 48 X-C races my last two years of H.S. winning all of them and set course records in 46 of them. We had no NXN or FL back then so I simply went to the US AAU Nat'l Open X-C Champs and finished 12th over 6 miles about 30 seconds behind Frank Shorter who had won the Olympic Marathon 80 days earlier. I graduated in 1973 from H.S. so I am a greybeard compared to most of you young pups on here. So, that is my H.S. credentials if you want to keep reading and find out how I was able to get to that running/racing level. Or, you can read the trolls on the other threads.....

Craig Virgin wrote:

it even withstood Lukas Verzbicas' assault a few years back (and it was only goal Lukas never achieved his senior year as he went on to win NXN and FL that Dec. as well as sub 4:00 and sub 8:30).

Would just like to say LV jogged it in the last 300 and waved to the crowd the whole time.

So how was training split up? Was it a general summer base phase and winter base phase? Did you do any indoor races? What did a typical week look like that you were able to train for 52 and 8:40? Thanks so much for the response, it's amazing to here from you!

Also did you race xc every week? 48 races seems like a very high nunber, how did you keep performance up for such a long season?

Craig, thank you for that insight. Can you talk a little more about your training during that time? What was a staple workout of yours?

Also, I once saw a video of you running intervals on the road around neighborhoods. Why not on a track or in a park or something?

Also, if you ever want to join in on "the trolls on the other threads", come on down.

Additional background: I grew up on a family farm just outside Lebanon, IL (pop 3600) with a small H.S. (412 student population) that had no weight room and no indoor or outdoor track. Just a large rectangular grass field behind the entire K-12 school complex and a nice park, an 18 hole golf course, and miles of country roads. Rolling hills north and west... flat south and east. My parents were lower middle class farmers and I had 3 siblings so we didn't have many luxuries. I played baseball and basketball in middle school and did not take up running until freshman year of H.S. I worked for my parents on the farm from age 10 on... and it was a lot of hard physical work in all kinds of weather conditions....working w/ 900 acres of crops and livestock. (much like the Kenyans and Ethiopians even today). I have one other remarkable piece to my background. I was diagnosed with congenital urological disease as a kindergartener and the first reconstructive surgery on my bladder failed at age 5 and doctors kept me alive for the next 8 years with oral and IV antibiotics as well as painful IVP testing in a hospital every 6 months. I had to be part of health management by listening to my body and telling the doctors when raging infection symptoms became noticeable. To do all this I had to learn to "listen" to my body...as well as to "tune it out" when in pain. Finally, I had another reconstructive surgery in 8th grade that corrected most of the urological problems, returned my kidneys to almost full function, and allowed me to live a normal life. I mention the physically hard farm life and the medical health challenges only because they were important components to shaping me as a successful runner later on. Both conspired to help create the mental and physical toughness that I would need to run distance races in H.S... besides my love of sport.

murna wrote:

Craig Virgin wrote:

it even withstood Lukas Verzbicas' assault a few years back (and it was only goal Lukas never achieved his senior year as he went on to win NXN and FL that Dec. as well as sub 4:00 and sub 8:30).

Would just like to say LV jogged it in the last 300 and waved to the crowd the whole time.

With all due respect, muma, I was riding in the lead truck in front of Lukas and nothing that you wrote was true at all. He gave it his best shot or you don't know Lukas. His problem was that he ran his first mile too slow and his second mile too fast and saved nothing in the tank for the last mile and the critical last 600 meters uphill to the finish line. End of story unless you care to ask Lukas yourself.

Had no idea about your condition, I just knew you were the man, an inspiration for us young late 70s runners. I'm sure most people want to read how you trained but your last post speaks volumes, it's about the heart, soul, grit, and determination not necessarily the workouts.

Thanks Craig for the posts. I remember some of the so called track surfaces in those days. Would have loved to see you running in HS on the tracks of today. I coach HS and for years always speak of a great named Craig Virgin. My HS guys always look you up and come back with "who the heck was he?" It's like trying to describe who was ALI in boxing. Lots of us old duffers still here and love to know you are well.

Craig, I was a huge fan of yours and other guys from your era. How many marathons did you run and why did you not pursue that distance more extensively?

Great to here from such an accomplished runner!

Ok, details, now that you have a little background I will start on training. First of all, my H.S. coach had only been coaching cross country for 2 years and he had no personal background in the sport. We learned together. He did take 2 graduate school classes in swimming from an Olympic swimming coach at Indiana U. Swimming and running are similar so he knew that I needed over distance, intervals, and then taper/rest before a race. His background was baseball/baseball hence the 24 cross country races per season....or usually 2 per week. That's what basketball/baseball teams do and he didn't know anything differently. I raced too much back then and many of the young guys in HS and college race too little nowadays.... the truth is somewhere in the middle. But, that's what I did. Starting with my soph year I took each race out hard and just ran as hard as I could until I died.... hopefully within sight of the finish line. Much like the Africans do now. My goal was to win and break the course record every race... even if it was mine. Very simplistic but it worked.

MILEAGE: Starting with my soph year I started to do 3 mi. AM runs every day except for the day of a race and the day before a race. My distance training runs in the afternoon were usually 6, 8, or 10 mile runs. I averaged 8 mile runs most of the time but usually did a 10 mile run in the afternoon on Sun....after a 3-mile run in the morning. My final two years of H.S. I averaged 60-80 miles per week which was upper middle for that time. There were other top HS runners doing 80-100 mpw and there were some doing 50-70 that were also successful. I felt 60-80 was sufficient for me back then and I tried to do them all at a pretty good clip and maybe even hard some days. I did not understand the concept of easy-hard or the importance of recovery day runs back then. Thank God I was young and my body could absorb the punishment back then at the age of 15-17.

One other note about the 24 races per season. I would usually run over the race course as a warm up and over it again as a warm down. But, my coach had a habit of dropping us off 3-6 miles from the school to run back on the rural roads.... so I would get a hard 3-miles that day as well as a lot of maintenance miles before/after.... so that kept my training mileage up despite the constant racing. I feel now that the constant hard 3-miles so often probably built my Max VO 2 up high as a result. During college they tested me once at 84... and post-collegiately I was involved in a program for 3 years that tested me 3-4 times per year with the same doctor/treadmill/protocol... and I routinely tested 84-88 with one "high" of 92.

The next post will deal with intervals/hill training/fartlek.

Incredible. Thanks for this info.

Craig,

I'm from Illinois as well, so I've seen you at the state meets and have heard about some of your exploits, but some of this is news to me... and fascinating.

Concerning your next post about training, how did that training work for your teammates? I've always assumed you were part of a very small team.

Craig's secret is the family farm, which I've been to. Farm breakfast, eggs, sausage, home fries and toast. At night on the farm it's perfectly quiet, so Craig, no doubt, got a restful sleep every night.

Here are the results from Craig's senior year in high school. Astonishing.

all results in yards except where noted.

4/07 8:50.4 2 mile & 4:17 relay leg

4/24 8:55.6 & 4:16.6 St Clair County meet

4/28 8:59.0 Granite City Invite

5/02 9:24.2 O'Falon Relays

5/03 4:27.9 & 2:02.1 Conference meet

5/05 8:46.6 & 4:11.8 relay Orphan Relays

5/15 8:54.0 Cahokia Invite

5/18 8:53.6 & 4:10.9 District

5/21 8:48.6 & 4:08.5 Meet of Champions

5/25 4:10.0 State meet heat

5/26 8:42.6 & 4:12.2 State finals

6/01 4:05.5 Top 10 meet

6/09 8:40.9 Intl Prep Invite - HS 2 mile record

6/23 13:36.8 3 mile at Ntl Jr AAU

7/04 4:06.1 Freedom Mile (5th)

7/14 8:10.2 3000 for 3rd vs West German Jrs

7/20 8:16.0 3000 win vs Poland Jrs

7/28 13:58.2 5000 win vs USSR Jrs

fascinating to hear about your health struggles and upbringing as well as that meat-grinder of a race schedule and how you thrived off of it. What did you run at age 18/19 in college?

A liitle more in depth on Craigs races/results:

http://www.runningentertainment.com/runningshots17.html

7000Altitude wrote:

Thanks Craig for the posts. I remember some of the so called track surfaces in those days. Would have loved to see you running in HS on the tracks of today. I coach HS and for years always speak of a great named Craig Virgin. My HS guys always look you up and come back with "who the heck was he?" It's like trying to describe who was ALI in boxing. Lots of us old duffers still here and love to know you are well.

i know people who were actually at the race when Craig broke Pre's 2 mile record. They said it was so hot that afternoon that the asphalt track was sticking to the runner's feet. An amazing run. His 10k AR at nationals in 1979 had the same formula. Oppressively hot and windy. Craig obliterated the field from the gun. Paul Geis and Bill Donakowski foolishly hung on for two laps.

65.1

2:09.5

2:41.9 1000 (26:59.0 pace)

5:26.4 2000 (2:44.5, 27:12.0)

8:11.4 3000 (2:45.0, 27:18.0)

10:57.7 4000 (2:46.3, 27:24.3)

13:44.9 5000 (2:47.2, 27:29.8)

16:31.4 6000 (2:46.4, 27:32.3)

19:20.3 7000 (2:48.9, 27:37.6)

22:09.5 8000 (2:49.2, 27:41.9)

24:58.3 9000 (2:48.8, 27:44.8)

27:39.4 10000 (2:41.1)

13:44.9/13:54.5