HOULIHAN SHELBY with the AR in heusden

It's nice that you put TrackCoach in his place, but can we get back to talking about Shelby now? This is page 5, and correct me if I'm wrong, but no one has even asked about her training yet. Does anyone know what kinds of workouts she's doing? Or eating or sleeping habits? Or vitamin regimen? Or if she does yoga? Or what weightlifting exercises she does? Or anything else relevant to how someone else can achieve what she achieved?

off topic? wrote:

It's nice that you put TrackCoach in his place, but can we get back to talking about Shelby now? This is page 5, and correct me if I'm wrong, but no one has even asked about her training yet. ..

Good point!

I'm sure you know the basic outline. It's BTC, so there's an emphasis on strength. She's slowly ramped up her mileage from her freshman year of college until now. Her first year at BTC, she was doing 60/70 mpw, 70 last year and 80 this year.

If you search, you'll find some more details, such as:

During the winter, Houlihan operates off a seven-day cycle which includes one strength (endurance) workout, one speed workout and one long run while doing strength work in the gym three times a week on her non-workout days. During the competition season, that changes to a 12-day cycle, with one hard workout every three days.

•4 mile tempo, followed by 8x400 or 2x800/400/400

•Long runs, where the second hour is at 6 min/mi

Thank you for that information!

Since the basic philosophy at BTC is probably the same for everyone, you might enjoy this thread, which includes a detailed weekly plan for Jager:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=8539375

dang I want video of race, meanwhile these photos are incredible:

https://www.temposhot.nz/MD/Eurotrash/n-NwkmWC/Heusden-5000m-W/

off topic? wrote:

Does anyone know what kinds of workouts she's doing? Or eating or sleeping habits? Or vitamin regimen? Or if she does yoga? Or what weightlifting exercises she does? Or anything else relevant to how someone else can achieve what she achieved?

“What was the secret, they wanted to know; in a thousand different ways they wanted to know The Secret. And not one of them was prepared, truly prepared to believe that it had not so much to do with chemicals and zippy mental tricks as with that most unprofound and sometimes heart-rending process of removing, molecule by molecule, the very rubber that comprised the bottoms of his (her) training shoes.”

Lots of info in here.

https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a22520474/shelby-houlihan-is-on-a-hot-streak/

gotta ask wrote:

Great result! Congrats!

But, I gotta ask: did she look relaxed?

Yeah, and did she go home devestated?

newarticle wrote:

Lots of info in here.

https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a22520474/shelby-houlihan-is-on-a-hot-streak/

For the haters and doping accusers:

RW: At a time when the sport suffers from allegations of doping, whenever somebody like you has a huge breakthrough, there are always people who are skeptics and question the legitimacy of your performance. How do you handle that?

SH: In a way you have to be honored that you’re at the level that people are questioning it. I try not to read all that stuff because it can get to me a little bit. It’s a little defeating. It takes the air out of your balloon. It’s a time when I should be celebrating and really happy and if I’m reading things that say I have to be cheating, I just want to tell them to have some faith in me. I’m not cheating. It’s easy to jump to those conclusions after this year—on paper I’ve had huge PRs, but if you’re around me every day, seeing what I’m doing, you’d know that I probably should have had a little faster PRs to begin with. I likely could have broken four minutes in the 1500 last year, and I definitely could have been in the 14:40s in the 5K. It’s not as shocking as it seems. I love working hard and I love the workouts that leave me on the ground dying.

Jerry keeps telling the story of when we were in Mammoth and the guys had just finished their workout. I just see Evan [Jager] laid out on the track, dying. I was like, “Yes! This is going to be a good day!” Jerry thought my reaction was so funny. If I’m not on the ground dying, I didn’t work hard enough. I can feel myself getting better.

It’s not my job to convince people that I’m clean. It’s my job to run fast and enjoy what I’m doing. People are going to have opinions about it. I hope they can believe that this is me and I’ve always believed I could get to this point. I love what I do. I’ve worked really hard. It’s not something that’s happened in a year. I started running when I was 5 years old. It’s taken me 20 years to get to this point.

I might care, if there was video.

Between Shelby and Sydney I'm not sure which is more inspiring but it's a good problem to have

Still no video of the race??!?!?

I am wondering the same...

Jeremy R wrote:

Still no video of the race??!?!?

It's a Nike conspiracy!

vivalarepublica wrote:

Jeremy R wrote:

Still no video of the race??!?!?

It's a Nike conspiracy!

No splits, either.

I could see BTC deciding the less other people know about her races, the better.

off topic? wrote:

Does anyone know what kinds of workouts she's doing?...Or anything else relevant to how someone else can achieve what she achieved?

In her interviews she always mentions two things that really helped her. First, she ramped up her mileage slowly so as to not get hurt. Second, she worked on changing her attitude towards racing -- it sounds as if she had some doubts about whether she could run fast/win/and so on. It wouldn't be surprising if she worked with a sports psychologist on self-doubt. (FWIW, Rowbury mentioned that the NOP psychologist played a big role in getting her faster.)

Here's some detail about workouts from the latest interview:

RW: What was that workout that tipped you and Jerry off [that she was in shape to break the 5000 AR]?

SH: It was three sets of 1200 meters with three minutes rest, 400 meters with one minute rest, 400, then three minutes rest between the sets. And he wanted me to run race pace, which is 71 [seconds per 400 meters] for the first 1200, 70s for the second 1200, then 69s for the third 1200. I was 69.70 for the first one, 69 for the second, then 69 down to 67 for the last one. My 400s were supposed to be 68 [seconds] but I was running 66s or 65s. It was feeling super controlled and very easy. It was coming naturally—it was the pace my body wanted to run.

Are we even sure this race actually exists?

BTC FTW wrote:

vivalarepublica wrote:

It's a Nike conspiracy!

No splits, either.

I could see BTC deciding the less other people know about her races, the better.

There's this little thing called the internet---they all already know;)