HRE wrote:
Note that Shorter's book came out a few years ago. That may well be the first time that particular piece of information came out. In the 70s we knew Shorter ran a 20 each week as pretty much we all did but that was about as much as anyone knew. There wasn't specific stuff about the 20s. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Frank himself only worked that out in hindsight.
I had the privilege of chatting with Frank last year, so I asked him about this specifically, as I’ve always been curious about the apparent absence of MP work but lack of info on how he approached the LR.
He said, in a nutshell, that the first half was always relatively easy, getting it going towards the end, then the second half was by feel on the day. If he was feeling good, he’d rock it, getting down to MP or faster by the end. If he was tired or flat, he’d just keep it steady. So it sounded like if it was a good one, he’d work down to ~6:00 pace by ten miles, then start rolling, or if it wasn’t happening, just cruise in at that. When he got to Boulder, he said he and a group had a 10 mile loop from his house they’d do twice. Sounded like they’d all run together for the first one, then the second half would be sorting out the pecking order, haha.
So it sounded like in the scope of a training rhythm, it was a good hard long progression every other week or so. It should also be noted that he would usually do a hard session the day before or the day after the long run.
It’s interesting that his training approach was actually structurally kinda similar to Tinman’s approach, though his track work was faster. Same relative weekly format year round with low-volume track/high-intensity sessions or short tempos every other day with easy jogging between.