I met Seb Coe today ... and I was wrong

coe appears to contradict himself when asked about his mileage when RACING: he says that he was doing about 100 miles a week (when racing)...then during track season much lower. Since when is "racing" different than "track season?"

.........

I asked: "How does that compare to when you were racing?"

He said (laughing) "It's quite different. I was doing about 100 miles a week in twice daily sessions back then."

I said: "As much as that?"

He said: "Well, not every week, but during the bread and butter months, I would get up to 100 miles a week. During track season, it would be much lower, of course, but I would say the average was about 70 miles a week."

Well -- that's it. From the horse's mouth, as it were, to the Let's Run board. Seb ran mileage. Lots of it.

I was wrong.

Martin

longerlonger wrote:

coe appears to contradict himself when asked about his mileage when RACING: he says that he was doing about 100 miles a week (when racing)...then during track season much lower. Since when is "racing" different than "track season?"

Because he was asked to compare what he does now with what he did in the past (when you were racing=when you were a competitive elite athlete):

He said: "Yes, I run about 30 miles a week or so and lift weights a couple of times a week."

I asked: "How does that compare to when you were racing?"

longerlonger wrote:

coe appears to contradict himself when asked about his mileage when RACING: he says that he was doing about 100 miles a week (when racing)...then during track season much lower. Since when is "racing" different than "track season?"

Your reading comprehension is awful. How could you not understand what Martin meant? He asked him to compare his current running to his competitive days or when he was still "racing." Please THINK.

I ain't buying that Coe ever did 100 miles a week. He did do daily speed sessions I've heard. 60-70 miles tops for him!

Right. Of course you would know what Coe did better than he did.

It never changes.

Successful running does not come easy.

Everybody is looking for the "secret".

Well, the "secret" is hard, fast running and lots of it. Seb is confirming this fact. (So what if he got into his competitors head by saying "I'm not even trying as hard as you.")

All the low mileage guys want to believe there is a different "secret" out there that does not constitute hard work. Low mileage guys: have fun never running to your potential!!!

how can this even be debatable (unless for kicks)?

CLEARLY, and beyond dispute, Coe's latest testimony proves that 100mpw is indicative of his training efforts at that time.

Hmmm....Martin & Coe.

You guys should write a book together.

The first does have a bit of a ring to it, does it not?

Martin

Zat0pek wrote:

What I find interesting is that in his statement, Coe apparently expressed his training volume in MILES rather than kilometers. Since when do the Brits express anything in English system units, especially when speaking to a British audience?

That has to be the most ill-advised reasoning I've seen on here yet. When do the English express things in English to fellow Englanders? Hmm let me see....

I'm a 32 year old Brit and I've never heard a fellow Brit express distance in kilometers EVER!

For what it's worth, here's my take on this.

Some people lay great emphasis on how much mileage they clock in a week because they believe this plays a leading role in determining their fitness. If you believe this then it makes sense to count all your miles and to make a certain weekly mileage your goal.

The Coes didn't believe that mileage, in of itself, was the key. Rather, they saw a high mileage diet, as persued by some of their contempories, as being a way of shying away from pace. Rather than having a certain mileage as the goal then, they were more keen to make sure they covered a range of paces in their training. Since there wasn't a set weekly mileage target there was no need to count it precisely. So Coe may well have gone for a six mile trot every morning, but they didn't see a need to count it, after all that was the easy bit. The hard bit was doing the paced sessions, and so this was recorded and monitored carefully.

Maybe this was a bit of a reaction to the LSD training that was in vogue at the time, the idea that by just churning out the miles you could get race fit, setting off the quantity/quality debate that has rumbled on ever since. I think most people recognise now that you need a combination of both, the exact mix depending on the event and the individual. Anyone who adheres to a low-mileage ethic, or hides from quality work by just doing high mileage, is just trying to make their life easy.

Extremley well said.

Or, to quote Peter Coe himself: "Some athletes use distance training as an excuse for not thinking."

Martin

It wouldnt surprise me if he was lying back in the day,do you really believe Steve Jones just ran 40 min on his easy days in marathon training. Thats what it shows in Running With The Legends.

While I find this reasoning to be, well, reasonable (Lydiard actually calls for supplementationn of 100-mile weeks with undocumented "jogs" which could easily amount to an additional 20-30 miles of running per week), I find it disingenuous at best, and fraudulent at worst, the detailed training given in Coes' book and assertions about low-mileage made that NEVER mention any auxiliary running at all.

I think that the Coe's are not to be trusted in their portrayal of Seb's training at any point, whether it is from earlier "gamesmanship" ploys of low-milage, or for current "fond memories" of higher mileage. At least we have the accounts aplenty of more honest world-beaters who did plenty of miles and plenty of hard pace.

Why does everyone think that 100 miles a week is so much? I would not consider that to be high mileage. Here's what could be a sample 100 mile week for a guy like Coe during their base training period:

M am 4 miles easy pm 6x800 on the road,3 up,3 down (9 mi)

T am 4 miles easy pm 10 miles steady + strides, drills(11)

W am 4 miles easy pm 20x200 w/200 rec,3 up,3 down (11)

T am 4 miles easy pm 10 miles steady + strides, drills(11)

F am 4 miles easy pm 8 miles steady + strides, drills(9)

S am 4 miles easy pm 7 mile tempo run, 2up,2 down (11 mi)

S am 14 miles steady "long run" pm rest

That's a 100 mile week, without doing any session longer than 14 miles, and only 5 sessions of 10 miles or more.

If you cut out the morning runs and warm-ups, cool-downs, you are left with about 60 miles of "quality running" that Coe counted as mileage, which is at the low end of your estimate of 60-70 for his top mileage weeks.

Californian wrote:

Why does everyone think that 100 miles a week is so much? I would not consider that to be high mileage. Here's what could be a sample 100 mile week for a guy like Coe during their base training period:

MADE UP SCHEDULE

Wow, you figured out how to add 7 days of doubles to create a 100 mile sample week. GOOD FOR YOU! Unfortunately, Seb may never have a run a single week in his life that looked anything like that.

Hey, and guess what, if you make those morning runs 5 miles instead of 4, and add a mile to the evening runs too, and have him do an easy "shake-out" of 3 the morning of his Sunday long run.......VOILA!!!! He's done 115 miles. Think about....never running more than 14 in a single run, easy morning runs of ONLY 5 MILES.....and it gets you to 115.

See, I don't know why people think 115 miles is a lot, it's not (because I strung some #'s together that made it seem reasonable). Seb likely did at least that. Probably 120.

Everyone, I figure it out: SEB COE RAN 125 miles every week of his life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Averaging 70 miles a week for an 800 meter Olympic champion is not really low. Running up to 100 mpw is not low for an 800 or even a 1500 guy. You won't find many that do more than 60 mpw during the racing season. Coe was high mileage by middle distance standards.

\"Wow, you figured out how to add 7 days of doubles to create a 100 mile sample week. GOOD FOR YOU! Unfortunately, Seb may never have a run a single week in his life that looked anything like that.

Hey, and guess what, if you make those morning runs 5 miles instead of 4, and add a mile to the evening runs too, and have him do an easy \"shake-out\" of 3 the morning of his Sunday long run.......VOILA!!!! He\'s done 115 miles. Think about....never running more than 14 in a single run, easy morning runs of ONLY 5 MILES.....and it gets you to 115.

See, I don\'t know why people think 115 miles is a lot, it\'s not (because I strung some #\'s together that made it seem reasonable). Seb likely did at least that. Probably 120.

Everyone, I figure it out: SEB COE RAN 125 miles every week of his life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!\"

Actually, he did run weeks that looked like that because I have read the book written by his father and David Martin which outlines the main session of the day that he did during various periods of training.

My point of showing the sample schedule, since you seemed to miss it despite having that brilliant MD designation slapped on to your screen name, is that you could plausibly run a 100 miles a week during your base, and still run the high amount of quality workouts that Seb ran. See, even though Seb himself just said that he did 100 miles a week, people on these boards want to argue that he did 60-70 a week. Now, you can see how both people are right. he did 60-70 miles of what is considered quality training (sub 6:00 pace as another poster pointed out) and a total of 100 miles a week if you throw in the warm-ups and cool-downs and really easy runs. What escapes is why people think that 100 miles would be too high to handle doing the amount of quality work that he does. If you are doing doubles, 100 miles is not high mileage.

In trying to be witty, you point out that if Sen had added a mile to his morning and evening runs an extra three mile shake-out on Sunday, then he\'d have 115, which doesn\'t look like a lot. Guess what, that\'s not terribly high mileage either, but then you sound like an ignorant ass saying that Seb probably did 115 a week. I didn\'t pull the 100 miles a week number out of thin air and then decide that\'s how much Seb ran. He said that\'s what he ran, and I\'m merely pointing out that\'s its not high mileage.

miler man wrote:

That definitely puts the lie to the worthless mileage totals in "Better Distance Running" by his father. If Peter Coe were an accountant, all his clientswould bein prison for tax evasion.

How would Sebastian Coe possibly know how many miles per week he was running?

I don't believe it for a second. You guys will believe anyone.