Gordon Pirier: Only doing shorter reps in the winter time

I reckon we all should jog. I'm always injured.

Lydiard Cerutty wrote:

I was recently reading up on Gordon Pirier training. And, in his book Running Fast and Injury Free. He says that during the winter that the intervals should be mostly in the 100m-200m rep range. Very interesting overall read. He really goes into Woldemar Gerschler training philosophy. Thoughts on this? Obviously Woldemar Gerschler training worked, but it has largely been forgotten.

Well.......it has got a renaissance with my system . But in a different form.....

Subway Surfers wrote:

I reckon we all should jog. I'm always injured.

Read the book, you can read it free online. Gordon Pirier did a hour of easy running before his intervals and 20 minutes afterwards. According to Gordon Pirier, Woldemar Gerschler required his athletes to do at least a hour of easy running per day.

SUPERIOR COACH JS wrote:

Lydiard Cerutty wrote:

I was recently reading up on Gordon Pirier training. And, in his book Running Fast and Injury Free. He says that during the winter that the intervals should be mostly in the 100m-200m rep range. Very interesting overall read. He really goes into Woldemar Gerschler training philosophy. Thoughts on this? Obviously Woldemar Gerschler training worked, but it has largely been forgotten.

Well.......it has got a renaissance with my system . But in a different form.....

Yeah, but no. If you actually read up on his system it wasn't just rest down to 120 BPM. It was within a certain amount of time. For example, if some one took longer than 65 seconds for the heart to recover back to 120 BPM from the 200m reps they were done for the day with intervals. There were no set in stone workouts. It was adapting with how the athlete was reacting to the workout.

A few other things from his book: He believed that atheltes should keep their volume about the same year around. Advocates that people do lots of hill running. Weight training every2-3 days. Average week of Gordon Pirier training according to the book:

It was a different time, wasn't it? I'd imagine there are some runners today who wouldn't believe anyone could do that sort of training for months on end let alone run well while doing it. Kind of makes you question the whole hard/easy thing. He eventually did some coaching, the names I remember were one guy, a Kiwi called Tim Harkness, Anne Audain, Deb Elsmere, (I think, I believe she ended up married to Greg Lautenslager but won't swear to this, and another woman, Ann Someone, Packard maybe? It would be interesting to know how much the training he gave to these folks resembled what he did. I know he almost destroyed Anne Audain whose career was salvaged very nicely by John Davies but I don't know what went on with the other three. He did coach a friend of mine by mail for a time and had him doing four runs a day of twenty minutes each at a good effort which got the guy to a mile PR when he was in his thirties, if I recall correctly.

Those are some insanely long interval sessions. The intervals have to be at like lt pace, especially considering he does them every week day. Could you imagine any of the top ncaa teams doing something like this? I can't

Then on sunday he does three hour runs both sunday and saturday along with a one hour run sat and a 4 hour walk sunday.

The only way this works is if the paces are very slow. I think its safe to say no one out trained this guy, but he probably could have ran faster on more sensible training.

In today's era of technology, I can't see anyone with the patience to train like this. If you approached these runs with the traditional medium to hard efforts used for intervals today, you'd destroy yourself.

His training makes for slow running.

You also might want to look up how to spell his last name.

tacomafan wrote:

You also might want to look up how to spell his last name.

Yes, my bad. It is spelled Gordon Pirie. A few other things about his book I find interesting.

One, pretty sure Christopher McDougall plagiarized him. As he spends a good portion of the book on running form and the evils of modern running shoes.

Second, he was against stretching as he believed it caused injuries. He believed the correct way to warm up before intervals or hard workouts was to run around a bit than do what I would describe as running drills.

Third, he was against periodisation. He basically said in his book that people should touch on all of their systems year round.

He did about 20 miles in the three hour runs.

HRE wrote:

He did about 20 miles in the three hour runs.

If you read the book he said he did his long runs up an down mountains or across the country side in England or through the woods. So it wasn't just a easy 20 miler, it was across some tough terrain. And he puts a emphasis on surging up the hills.

Lydiard Cerutty wrote:

HRE wrote:

He did about 20 miles in the three hour runs.

If you read the book he said he did his long runs up an down mountains or across the country side in England or through the woods. So it wasn't just a easy 20 miler, it was across some tough terrain. And he puts a emphasis on surging up the hills.

You'd probably like Dick Booth's biography, "The Impossible Hero." I don't know how easy it is to find these days. In the span of decades of running he likely did different things. I'm pretty sure that Fred Wilt's profile of his training didn't mention any three hour runs but I will double check. One of the comments in Booth's book from one of the athletes he coached is that Pirie would get an idea for a way to train that he was really into and would dive into it or have his athletes do it. Then he'd lose interest in it or get really into some other idea.

I don't know how representative of what Pirie usually did that sample is or for how long a time it was representative. I don;t mean to knock the guy, I'm actually kind of a fan because he really arranged his whole life so that he could run even after he retired from big time competition. But I know a couple people who knew him who have said that he really did not seem like he was lacking in the ego department so I would not be surprised that he was presenting some of his more extreme samples as normal. He wouldn't be the first.

Maybe there is a way to read The Impossible Hero for free online. That is how I read Gordon Pirie book.

It may not be as hard to find as I thought or very expensive. Check Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Z97YGKO?pf_rd_p=c2945051-950f-485c-b4df-15aac5223b10&pf_rd_r=XEXEEJY0NKH0Z4KTYWFG

And I believe John Gilbody was the guy who put up the website where "Running Fast..." was originally available. I think he was in Bournemouth, UK. Maybe you can find him.

PS,

In that sample it lists the three hour run as "flat." I took that to mean terrain.

In case anyone wants to read the book Running Fast and Injury Free, here is where I read it at for free:

https://archive.org/stream/Running_Fast_and_Injury_Free_Gordon_Pirie/Running_Fast_and_Injury_Free_Gordon_Pirie_djvu.txt

HRE wrote:

PS,

In that sample it lists the three hour run as "flat." I took that to mean terrain.

In the book he goes in to greater details on his long runs and he says he usually did it over some tough terrain.

Why do you keep referring to Tooting Bec as Tooting "Bee"?