The Good Old Days of Track And Field Coverage: 1984 SI Profile of De Castella

Seriously? You're asking a question about journalism...in 2016? WTF is journalism? Today the "media" would consider De Castella to be part of the "vast right wing conspiracy".

It's the week after week average that counts." Maybe 170" is not week after week at 170.

In any event Sell could have trained smarter.

SlowFatMaster wrote:

I noticed the quote at the bottom of page 270 in the article where Telford (the physiologist) says, "People get injured when they alter the kind or the intensity of their training. Since 1979, Rob's has changed not at all. He still runs his 400s every Thursday in 65 seconds. His Sunday run is still the same pace. He's destroyed the myth that you have to intensify training to keep the body improving."

Fascinating and the opposite of Renato's approach.

This is why Deek stopped improving and people today run much faster.

ukathleticscoach wrote:

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

Great bloke, what a mustache?

Those were the days, I bet he went home and had a meat pie, a cold beer and pinched the missus on the backside.

He was a vegetarian

Bullshit, you're talking out of your arse. Back in the day the vegetarian disciples used to try and push this line and it pissed me off then and still does. I've known him for years, like every elite athlete he was careful about what he ate, not just for health and performance reasons, but also weight reasons. Hard to believe on that sort of mileage someone would have weight problems but he did and getting down to 68kg and staying there was always a problem. One of his favourite feeds, and probably more so now, was a good steak and a quality Australian red, meat pies though were definitely off the menu.

Stalled performance wrote:

SlowFatMaster wrote:

I noticed the quote at the bottom of page 270 in the article where Telford (the physiologist) says, "People get injured when they alter the kind or the intensity of their training. Since 1979, Rob's has changed not at all. He still runs his 400s every Thursday in 65 seconds. His Sunday run is still the same pace. He's destroyed the myth that you have to intensify training to keep the body improving."

Fascinating and the opposite of Renato's approach.

This is why Deek stopped improving and people today run much faster.

Probably something in this, like all endeavors, new things are tried and improvements sometimes occur.

BS Detector. wrote:

ukathleticscoach wrote:

He was a vegetarian

Bullshit, you're talking out of your arse. Back in the day the vegetarian disciples used to try and push this line and it pissed me off then and still does. I've known him for years, like every elite athlete he was careful about what he ate, not just for health and performance reasons, but also weight reasons. Hard to believe on that sort of mileage someone would have weight problems but he did and getting down to 68kg and staying there was always a problem. One of his favourite feeds, and probably more so now, was a good steak and a quality Australian red, meat pies though were definitely off the menu.

What no meat pies. But I bet he still had a cold beer while watching the footy, with a mustache like that it should be a crime not to.

The bloke did have a light beer each night with dinner... (page 125 of deCastella on Running)

If I recall from old RW, his dad had heart issues and did the Atkins diet.

Thanks for the link. I was pulling for him in '84. He was one of the reasons I became a runner. Loved that era with Lopes, Pat Porter, Treacy, both Jones'... Paul Cummings, Craig Virgin, Henry Marsh, Doug Padilla...etc.

Good point. wrote:

Stalled performance wrote:

This is why Deek stopped improving and people today run much faster.

Probably something in this, like all endeavors, new things are tried and improvements sometimes occur.

Deek essentially ran his fastest legit time in '81 although his Boston '86 was a bit faster.

Still, those times were done before he was 30 and he rapidly declined after that.

So doing the same training year after year only improved him for a relatively short period and didn't hold him there for long.

He was on a pritikin diet, not Atkins

That's right, his Dad Rolet, got on to the Pritikin diet and went extreme Pritikin. Virtually no fat or oils, etc, with his previous heart problems he'd been advised not to do this as your body needs certain amounts of these things. Also, to cut back on the big/intense mileage. He was an intense driven personality and held a stressful position in his working life with Nestle. Sadly he died of a heart attack while out running at age 73. He was a nice bloke.

Bit of info here:

http://davebyrnes.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/a-big-day.html

http://davebyrnes.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/rob-de-castella.html

PS - I'm not the blogger.