How would Percy Cerutty Train as Masters Miler?

Beuhler?

start here...

http://livingthestotanlife.blogspot.com/

He trained with his proteges. Run barefoot up sand dunes and power-lift.

VascularGary wrote:

I know of Herb Elliot's training from his coach Percy but, how would Percy have trained a master's middle distance club runner?

Serious replies only.

Cerutty once responded to a question about Elliot's training by saying, "I haven't the slightest idea what he does. I'm interested in making the man." You can find a good description of how Elliot trained in one of Fred Wilt's "How They Train" books. But that only tells you what Elliot did and isn't necessarily representative of what other of Cerutty's athletes did. For Cerutty the important things were challenging yourself, pushing yourself, not being intimidated by pain, becoming better than you currently are, etc. Athletics was a vehicle for doing those things rather than an end in itself.

He idolized Zatopek and many of his runners began training like Zatopek did, large numbers of reps. The group that Ron Clarke began training with when he returned to the sport was inspired by Cerutty and Zatopek. They'd been doing large numbers of fairly slow 400s with short, fairly fast recoveries. Over time they lengthened and slowed the reps then shortened and sped up the reps until they were essentially doing the fast steaady runs Clarke was known for. Other Cerutty runners did other things.

Again, for Cerutty it was the approach that mattered and not the specifics. He'd likely be really scornful of the "scientific" training so many do today with its emphasis on not over training, keeping to specific paces and inside your limits and the like. Generally he was not all that different from Lydiard. Bill Baillie spent some time in the 50s in Oz and trained with Cerutty. Later he said there were a lot more similarities than differences in the two approaches. Both believed it was necessary to build a big endurance base and then proceed to harder types of work.

None of which answers your question and really only Cerutty himself could do that specifically. But I'd imagine one of the first things he'd do is tell the runner to forget about the business of being a masters runner and just be a runner, to embrace suffering, train as hard and as much as possible following the general pattern from above, do weights (a major difference from Lydiard,) and be the best you can. Over time the runner would work out the specifics of doing all that for himself. I don't believe there's a more specific answer to your question.

Good post HRE

I believe we could also look at Percy's master years as an example of what he might recommend.

He was a prolific walker before he became a great ultrarunner. He ate raw foods, recommended living in a shack for a week bybthe ocean, reflecting alone once a year. His oddities were not warming up and avoiding the tarmac like the plague. He once time trialed a pretty fast mile on the dirt track in front of Herb and declared, "You may run faster than me but you'll never run harder than me!"