Training Schedules of former WR holders/olympic medalists from the 70's

nice. thanks.

What is the point?

If you didn't tell us the workout was from the 70's we would assume it was current.

The message is what? THat not much has changed in 40 years?

Thanks so much. I've always wondered about Lismont's training. It took a few seconds to work out who Puttemans was with the "E" missing from his first name but this is great.

I suspect the message is "This is what Puttemans and Lismont" did.

@HRE

If you have any more questions about Lismont, I'd be happy to answer them.

I only know about Puttemans what is mentioned in the book though, but Lismont can probably tell me more about him.

One thing I do want to express clearly is that the training done by Lismont is VERY hard on the body. Lismont is currently coaching a 20-year old (Dieter Kersten). This kid has been pretty successfull (28'57" 10000m and bronze medal at the european junior championships), but also has had a lot of injuries despite only training roughly 70% of what Lismont used to do. He also has a twin brother who ran great, but he quit because of injuries (mostly stress fractures) that wouldn't go away.

PS: Puttemans official name is indeed 'Emiel' but everyone in Belgium just calls him 'Miel' :p

Thanks, really interesting.

The two marathon runners from "my" era that I wished I knew more about were Lismont and Gerard Nijboer. We didn't hear too much about them, I suppose because they were from small, non-English speaking countries. Puttemans was much better known here perhaps because he did occasionally turn up at indoor meets in the US. I did not know the Belgian version of "Emiel."

The absence of long runs in Lismont's training intrigues me. I always swore by them but I also usually got bored after maybe an hour and a half. But I forced myself to do longer runs and just put up with the boredom. So I suppose I'd like to know if he was just so bored by them that he didn't do them even though he thought he'd have run better if he had (hard to imagine in his case but worth asking anyway) or whether he really didn't think they were helpful.

I used to know a guy who was one of the earlier serious runners to get a Ph.D in Exercise Physiology. I remember him saying he'd found that there was some enzyme that was released in the muscles on runs beyond an hour that was damaging to them. He would never run longer than an hour outside of races. His version of the Sunday long run was three ten mile runs in under an hour each. So I'd be interested in Lismont's take on that.

Gerard Nijboer was also in the book, but the training week mentioned wasn't really representative because it took place during racing season.

Generally he did great volumes of running (+- 150miles/week). I think you can compare it to modern day training done by most elite marathoners, just a bit more miles.

About Lismont's long runs, it's not that he never did any long runs, but just not very often. From experience he felt that it didn't make much of a difference to do 2 x 15km or to run 30km straight, so for him it was more a matter of preference.

Okay, I'll push the question about long runs just a bit further and then let you go. On occasions when he'd do a long run, was there anything specific that got him to do it?

It was just something he decided in the moment. Lismont was completely self coached, so he would just do what felt right for him.

Thanks again.

Thank you. Nice to find the odd interesting gem amongst all of the trolls, idiots, and doping accusations of this forum.

This blows my mind, Lismont's training especially. I still can't understand how someone can do doubles while having a regular job, and triples seems unimagineable. I mean, if you have to be to work at, say, 8am, with the time it takes to get ready, and get to work, and so forth, there are several months of the year you'd be running in complete darkness. As for noon-time runs, did most places of work in the '70's have showers? If so, and assuming a 1-hour lunch break (which is already greater than typical from my experience), wouldn't you still take up your entire lunch running, changing, and showering? Even if you skipped lunch, wouldn't management chew you out for being seen in "regular clothes" while heading out the door (this happened to me once)?

Thank you for the information regarding the (simplistic) training of guys from this era. Lately I have been searching out similar training philosophies as I feel we (Americans) are too involved with technology.

Do note behind Lismont's name the years of his Olympic performances are swapped (correct in the last paragraph).

Most office jobs that I know of start at nine. So even with an hour commute, and lots of people don't have anything that length, running six miles at 7:00 AM lets you grab a quick shower and get to work on time. I often ran at lunch, usually 6-7 miles which left 15 minutes to sponge off in the bathroom, no, there weren't always showers although sometimes there were, and stuff a sandwich down. No one ever made a point of being in "regular clothes," though I'm not sure running clothes fit that description, but if someone had I'd probably have had my running stuff on underneath my work clothes and taken them off at my car. And if you run from work again at 5:00 you likely can shorten your commute time because the rush hour will have died down for your drive home.

One thing that many of us who kept running after college in those years did was look for jobs that were compatible with running. So you might not take a job at a place where you'd get a hard time for running at lunch or with a super long commute or where you regularly needed to do more than forty hours a week. I don't think that happens so much now.

If you're still around after all this time, there is currently a thread here about what would happen if you ran for an hour every day. That brought to mind for me an old thread that mentioned Marc Smet and said that he did exactly that much and nothing more. As you seem to know Belgians, do you know anything about Smet?

+1 - If you're still around 2 years later, it would be interesting to hear about Marc Smet's training which is often cited as 'an hour a day' on these boards but with little other information

HRE wrote:

I used to know a guy who was one of the earlier serious runners to get a Ph.D in Exercise Physiology. I remember him saying he'd found that there was some enzyme that was released in the muscles on runs beyond an hour that was damaging to them. He would never run longer than an hour outside of races. His version of the Sunday long run was three ten mile runs in under an hour each. So I'd be interested in Lismont's take on that.

I avoided the long runs without knowing about the enzyme. I did talk to Snell when he was at Dallas, as I had figured out how to run some intervals with a sore hamstring. He noted that would work, and gave me the physiology why, but I didn't have a medical degree so that part went in one ear and out the other.

tctctc wrote:

+1 - If you're still around 2 years later, it would be interesting to hear about Marc Smet's training which is often cited as 'an hour a day' on these boards but with little other information

There was another thread from around the same time when this one showed up started by the same guy. He said he didn't know much about Smet but that someone who did said that he enver knew anyone who trained as hard as Smet did.