Rupp: 6 x 1K @ 2:28 - 2:24

not too shabby wrote:

not too shabby wrote:

Not too shabby for a kid who couldn't break 4:00 in college. Man he was on some gas.

With my apologies to Galen's ego... he did break 4:00 in spring of 2009, his redshirt senior season.

He ran 4:01 and 13:37 in HS, saying he wasn't good because ne didn't break 4 in college is just stupidly misguided

He didn't show improvement in his finishing speed or mile speed for years. It was only in his senior year that he had it.

No one would say that someone who ran 4:01/13:37 in high school didn't have sub 13 potential. His development appeared to stall for a few years at the lower distances and he was always losing in the kick against top competition until that senior year.

I was coached by John Anderson for 2 years back in the late 80's. We were based out of the West Midlands (Birmingham area). We had an amazing group of runners which included Dave Moorcroft. The the BMC article is spot on. John Anderson believed in always keeping your speed in check throughout the year. One of Dave's best workouts and how he would gauge his fitness before a big race was a session of 4 x 2000m @ 62 sec pace w/ 7 minutes recovery. Dave nailed this session just before he ran 13:00. We would also do a lot of morning Fartlek workouts before an afternoon track session. Unlike conventional thinking John looked at a training day (AM/PM) as two separate days. For example, we would run a Fartlek/Aerobic session in the morning, a speed session in the PM and the next morning would be a recovery run (considered a day rest) and then come back with another speed session in the PM. John believed that the actual hours of rest between sessions was adequate recovery. For instance; if we did a morning Fartlek (9:00am-10:00am) recovered 6-8 hours depending on the time of year with regards to daylight and the afternoon/evening session at 4:00pm/6:00pm- 6:00pm-8:00pm. Your next quality session would be the next day at 4:00pm approximately 20 hours of recovery in between. The emphasis was on quality and not so much on mileage.

FYI- Galen had much more natural talent than Dave. Dave could not withstand excessive mileage and thus had to maximize the majority of his workouts daily. Most of his "Recovery" runs were modified threshold/tempo tempo runs. If Dave could of logged in the easy recovery mileage that Galen did while incorporating this training plan he would of run under 12:50 and sub 7:30 (his 3000m PB is 7:32).

Galen Rupp is the Workout King. So what?

What matters is how you prepare for race day. It is certainly not puking!

No wonder Al Sal had a heart attack at about age 35!

Struggling miler wrote:

There was a point where he was trying to break 4 as a Duck, and he couldn’t do it, despite being sent to numerous meets outside the regular schedule to try get it done.

Completely false.

To Stopme99:

Well, if Rupp's VDOT was about 82 (13:01/27:07) or 83 (12:53/26:51) when he did this workout, then his R pace would be about 56 per 400m or 2:20 for 1000m. His I pace would be between 2:38 and 2:36 per 1000m. So the workout of 1000m repeats between 2:28 and 2:24 is slower than R pace and faster than R pace.

Daniels also said that you should not do R pace reps longer than 2 minutes. 2:24 to 2:28 is longer than 2 minutes.

To BUTTHOLE SURFER:

Wow, that 4 x 2000 in 5:08 is outrageous even with the 7 minute rest! Were the morning fartlek workouts the alternating 33/45 200s or something else? Do you happen to know how fast Moorcroft ran for what you described as "modified tempo/threshold runs"?

Table 3 on page 9 of the article lists paces from 5:50/mile to 6:15/mile for his distance training continuous runs. The end of the first paragraph on page 10 reads as follows:

David actually stated that he avoided performing steady training runs with certain athletes simply because they ran much more quickly. „What worked for them did not necessarily work for me and vice-versa“.

Sorry, meant to write "the workout of 1000m repeats between 2:28 and 2:24 is slower than R pace and faster than I pace" instead of what I wrote.

It’s absolutely true Rupp struggled with the 1500m/mile until his senior year at Oregon. Salazar sent him to loads of extra meets trying to get Rupp to run sub 4. He couldn’t do it.

However, in his senior year something clicked and he was suddenly great at the 1500m/mile.