just curious.
just curious.
do you mean run in a bath tub with my wife on my shoulders? no i have not tried that yet.
I've done quite a bit of running in army boots (I used to live in Alaska). It takes getting used to, but made me feel like I could run through anything. Please don't tell Trackhead.
The essence of his training was that he did hard workouts every day, and considered most of his races easier than his workouts. He did not believe in easy days and he did not taper. Also, he had beer with his meals, including lunch. I have his original biography entitled "Zatopek - Marathon Victor", originally published in German. He was able and willing to put himself through a training regimen so rigorous that it would be mentally or physically impossible for just about anyone else. That was the key to his greatness. And to answer your question, no, I haven't tried it.
Zatopek is my coach.
Oh yeah, all the time. I run 60 or so hard 400's wearing army boots while carrying my wife on my shoulders and holding my breath as long as possible, preferably in deep snow or a hailstorm, or at least a heavy rain, to get the full training effect. And those are my easy days. No problem.
zatopek was THE MAN
I did zatopek for awhile, but it just gave me headaches and I had dreams about the snack bar, near portal 133, at Montreal Expos games. Zantac tackles the same problem without the dreams and that boiling acid reflux. I'll occasionally pop a zatopek or two before a big meeting and wash it down with a Red Bull chaser. I feel alert and inspired, ready to amalgemate a research and development start-up into a savings and loan, by gosh. But again, by bedtime, its back to that Canadian snack-bar. Place doesn't even exist anymore and I'm still there like clockwork every night. So, I've had to be careful. At my age, you don't want to mess with what little chemistry you got going. And honestly, I've never really considered it training. I'm just trying to temporarily fix the blow hole in my esophogus. Nope, no more zatopek for me.
It appears not many have done the multiple 200 and 400 meter repeats to which you refer.
Zatopek's strength was MENTAL. He clearly was one of the mentally toughest runners who ever lived.
A lot of people have said that his infamous 400 meter repeats were relatively easy, at 75-80 seconds each.
Actually, his core workout was more along the lines of 6:30/mile pace-ie, over 90 seconds a 400. Zatopek is basically lydiard-style, in interval form.
All I know is that Zatopek ran 80's when he did 100x400m... but geez, that is a HUNDRED 400's, I think we can cut him some slack.
Jim Ryun did 40x400m, in sets of 10 with "breaks" of calisthenics in between each set, averaging 68 with I believe 2:30 run and rest. And he was 18.
I don't think Zatopek ever did 100x400m. I remember his longest workout being 20x200m, 40x400m, 20x200m.
he ran them in a forest too, so the effort was probably worth 75 seconds or so on a synthetic track, but much safer from an injury prevention point of view.
the base training leading up to landy's first sub 4 in turku was basically hard 8 mile efforts then transitioned to multiple repeats of 600m(8-12).
Zatopek worked up to doing 50x 400 meters, twice a day.
Ryun did the 440's in sets of 10, doing up to 50 of these. The run + interval was a 3:00 departure time on a swimmer's clock.
Landy alternated 7 mile runs at 5:35 pace with 8-12x 600 yards in 90 seconds (66 second 440 pace) with 4:00 interval laps in between them.
Not to quarrel but I believe the 20/40/20 numbers are more accurate.
Manfred Steffney, the German coach, has admitted that some of the East German bloc runners tried those quantities (50-100x) but found the Law of Diminishing returns in effect. Very acidotic.
The curious point is that no one other than Zatopek really knows what he did.