Amazing Zatopek fact

Barry Magee said that even though Zatopek was running intervals, he was doing an amazing amount of total running volume and that was why he was more fit than his opponents.

sayer of Um wrote:

ever hear of Gaston Reiff?

however, most people haven't.

paris to brussels by train in 1954 would probably have not taken more than 3-4 hours. now it is maybe 2-21/2 hours.

a pain in the weltschmerz wrote:

Barry Magee said that even though Zatopek was running intervals, he was doing an amazing amount of total running volume and that was why he was more fit than his opponents.

Both Barry and Lydiard told me that Zatopek was a big influence on them not because of the speed of his reps but because of the volume he was doing. Van Aaken, who knew Zatopek pretty well, also said that the reps were on the slow side and it was the volume that made Zatopek so successful. His comment was that Zatopek "did 400 meters of jogging followed by 200 meters of less than jogging." Maybe he was stretching the definition of jogging here to make a point. Ron Clarke also told me that Zatopek's reps weren't very fast

The group that Clarke would train with when he returned to serious running started off imitating Zatopek. One of the guys in the group told me that they did large numbers of 400 reps at a fairly slow pace with recoveries at a pretty quick pace. He said that over time they lengthened and slowed the reps and kept the recoveries the same to the point where they were pretty much doing steady runs at a good pace which is what Clarke's training was known for..

Zatopek's biggest sessions reportedly were 60 x 400 with 200 recoveries which sounds staggering. But if you think the reps averaged 80 seconds or so, you're talking about a 22-23 mile run with 15 miles in segments done at 5:20 per mile. That should be manageable for someone capable of running on the down side of 30:00 for 10km.

Barabbas wrote:

I'm in the middle of reading the excellent Emil Zatopek biography Today We Die A Little by Richard Askwith. Along with the incredible well-documented exploits of the exemplary Mr. Zatopek was a little chestnut that I had never heard. Emil had been chasing the 5000 meters world record for years (Gunder Hagg's 13:58 from 1942) when he finally got it in Paris, running 13:57.2 on May 30, 1954. He then proceeded to lower his own 10,000 meters world record to 28:54.2 (becoming the first man under 29:00) in Brussles THE NEXT DAY (6/1/54). Has to be one of the greatest two-day distance running results of all time. Just thought I'd share.

I found it interesting that both records were set less than a month after Roger Bannister broke the world record for the mile when he was the first under 4 minutes.

Free Advice wrote:

Barabbas wrote:

I'm in the middle of reading the excellent Emil Zatopek biography Today We Die A Little by Richard Askwith. Along with the incredible well-documented exploits of the exemplary Mr. Zatopek was a little chestnut that I had never heard. Emil had been chasing the 5000 meters world record for years (Gunder Hagg's 13:58 from 1942) when he finally got it in Paris, running 13:57.2 on May 30, 1954. He then proceeded to lower his own 10,000 meters world record to 28:54.2 (becoming the first man under 29:00) in Brussles THE NEXT DAY (6/1/54). Has to be one of the greatest two-day distance running results of all time. Just thought I'd share.

I found it interesting that both records were set less than a month after Roger Bannister broke the world record for the mile when he was the first under 4 minutes.

Interesting. So you're suggesting that some psychological barrier may have broken?

Dude had a 20K time faster than the current #2 & #3 world ranked 10K runners times added together.

That would be TWO days, not one. The month of May has 31 days.

overtrained wrote:

More amazing how he had to run about 5 times the mileage to break a record set by a guy who did about 20 miles a week.

Of course Zatu probably could have been faster if he ran less.

Yeah, you are probably right. Of course he was only faster than ... let's see ... every being that ever was. So maybe of course you are right.

overtrained wrote:

Respect Your Elders wrote:

Overtrained, are you 14? We're still talking about his amazing exploits over 60 years later. Seems like his training worked out pretty well.

He was competing against the undertrained.

How is 50x400 every day working for you?

Letsrun, where blowhards who kniw nothing about training come to call everyone else an idiot.

Let me educate you young padwan. What a lot of runners can't comprehend these days is that when a run is scheduled in interval format doesn't mean it is a scrape you off the track effort. I could go out and run a huge volume of intervals every everyday without ever overtraining because I might be doing it at aerobic pace or with an aerobic recovery.

Say I have an athlete who is FT and I don't want him out there grinding through endless miles, I would give him an interval based steady workout which is more form and pace appropriate to his goal race, a workout which is both neuromuscular and gives aerobic benefits at the same time which allows the athlete to run fast but at moderate effort because I modulate the volume, interval length and recovery. I can do this with every workout from aerobic to tempo to race pace. This could very well be the winning formula for said athlete and he may never be overtrained. because it's specific to his needs and all while I shape this athlete into a champion, you are sitting down at your computer/phone on letsrun telling everyone that this is wrong and a recipe for burnout when you can't even grasp the simple concept of training, there is more than one way to skin a cat whether that be low volume or high volume, those are just the starting points to any training philosophy.

Blowhard at computer above who has never even met never mind trained a champion.

In agreeing that Askwith's book is excellent, there are many other amazing facts surrounding these two WRs in 3 days!

Not least that Zata was originally refused a French visa due to perceived criticism of Parisian nightlife(!!) on a previous visit three months before, when he became the first Czechoslovak to win l'Humanite cross country.

He finally got the visa in the middle of the night, ie 3am, May 30, took the first flight from Brussels to Paris, and broke the 5k record that evening. He flew back to Brussels the next morning (c45mins, even back then), endured a day of rain, ran alone from 3k onwards on a rain-soaked track the next evening, June 1, and ran the first sub-29mins!

I think I read that Zatopek ran his intervals in forest roads or trails. So, it would be almost like a huge fartlek run.

Lydiard wrote that runners would be better off running their repetitions on forest trails rather than the track because the track can create mental pressure to perform specific times rather than being guided more by feeling and instinct.

That worked really well with the high school kids I was coaching with Barry's schedules in the early 2000's.

"Of course actual top coaches and physiologists agree that neither of them trained optimally."

I've yet to read about the training of any past record holder that today's "experts" consider well nigh perfect. Zatopek ran too much too slowly, Snell needed to do intervals in his build up phase, Elliott trained too intensively so he had to retire very young, Ryun's training was simply nuts. Etc., etc., etc.

To beat the best that had ever existed before you is a tremendous feat and indicative that your training must have been very near optimum for you as an individual. Nobody can do more than beat the standards that exist at the time they are competing, otherwise any miler who runs faster than 3:35.6 for 1500 is a better athlete than Elliott.

overtrained wrote:

Respect Your Elders wrote:

Overtrained, are you 14? We're still talking about his amazing exploits over 60 years later. Seems like his training worked out pretty well.

He was competing against the undertrained.

How is 50x400 every day working for you?

50x400!! Yeah!! I want to know, who here has actually completed such a session? I am prepared to believe that Jim Ryun under the notorious flagellation of Coach Timmons when he was a psychologically immature but supertalented hs kid did something like this. I am not prepared to believe what ventolin^3 has to say regarding the equivalency of the session.

a pain in the weltschmerz wrote:

I think I read that Zatopek ran his intervals in forest roads or trails. So, it would be almost like a huge fartlek run.

Lydiard wrote that runners would be better off running their repetitions on forest trails rather than the track because the track can create mental pressure to perform specific times rather than being guided more by feeling and instinct.

That worked really well with the high school kids I was coaching with Barry's schedules in the early 2000's.

Zatopek definitely did some of his intervals on forest roads or trails. I don't know how much of it. I see that Pat Butcher is on the thread. He might have an idea. Arthur was always afraid of people "racing their training" and he was especially concerned of that happening on the track.

mark b wrote:

"Of course actual top coaches and physiologists agree that neither of them trained optimally."

I've yet to read about the training of any past record holder that today's "experts" consider well nigh perfect. Zatopek ran too much too slowly, Snell needed to do intervals in his build up phase, Elliott trained too intensively so he had to retire very young, Ryun's training was simply nuts. Etc., etc., etc.

To beat the best that had ever existed before you is a tremendous feat and indicative that your training must have been very near optimum for you as an individual. Nobody can do more than beat the standards that exist at the time they are competing, otherwise any miler who runs faster than 3:35.6 for 1500 is a better athlete than Elliott.

EXACTLY1

mark b wrote:

Nobody can do more than beat the standards that exist at the time they are competing,.

Sure they can. They can set a record that is ahead of their time and stands for almost two decades. Like Coe's 800 or El G's 1500 and Mile.

That shows better training methodology.

well yes they can wrote:

mark b wrote:

Nobody can do more than beat the standards that exist at the time they are competing,.

Sure they can. They can set a record that is ahead of their time and stands for almost two decades. Like Coe's 800 or El G's 1500 and Mile.

That shows better training methodology.

Not if you only get one off results. Ron Clarke once said that his grandmother could have coached Herb Elliott to a gold medal. Elliott's training was fine but it was more likely that Elliott himself was the big variable. Coe spawned many imitators but none of them got the results he did. Existing records set the standard for athletes who have a realistic shot at breaking them and generally also set limits on what the next record will be.