What made Frank Slorter so good?

augie wrote:

I talked to Frank Shorter at the Augustana cross country meet in illinois. I asked him what bit of advice helped him the most. He said that the only thing that got him through the 180k miles he ran in his life (an obvious exaggeration) was that he took his easy days easy and his hard days hard.

Deeks said the same thing

vladimir wrote:

Consistently- no major peaks or valleys. Day by day would vary by very hard and very easy days, but when you look at the weeks, months and years they are just a mirror image of each other.

I remember Frank saying that he always wanted to be 4 weeks away from peaking year-round. All he had to do was tweak his training and he'd be peaked in 4 weeks. Similarly, he said that he was blessed with the ability to manage to peak perfectly for one specific day.

Some interesting Frank Shorter workouts (mentioned in either Kings of the Road, or from My Marathon):

Either 2 or 4 (can't remember) weeks out from the 1972 Olympic Marathon Trials, Frank ran these 2 workouts in the same (140-mile) week:

1) 16 x 440yd in 60-64 with 30 second jogging recovery

2) 32 x 220yd in 29-30 with 15 second jogging recovery

And 4 weeks before the 1972 Olympic Marathon:

4 x 880yd in 2:00 with 60 second standing rest

People are correct about hard work and smarts.

Because there was much less money in the sport, none officially for athletes but some under the table, the pool of athletes with the ability to spend the training time necessary plus being able to afford a decent lifestyle was much smaller than it is today. This was especially true of the Africans. This does not mean Shorter would not have still been at or near the top, just that he would have had a lot more competition, especially from the PEDs crowd, which at the time was dominated by athletes from Warsaw Pact nations.

My most amusing anecdote is that on a cold day he won the US CC title wearing panty hose.

From a friend who spoke to him a few years ago, Frank said, "I could run 5 minute pace all day"

Obviously not true. He was great but he could barely run a marathon at 5 minute pace. He did however win the Olympics without running 5 minute pace.

I have his book My Marathon, I'll look through it to post some excerpts later tonight. Really good read. Highly recommend it.

He used to slaughter his rivals

arpy wrote:

Because there was much less money in the sport, none officially for athletes but some under the table, the pool of athletes with the ability to spend the training time necessary plus being able to afford a decent lifestyle was much smaller than it is today.

Interesting that you mention that. Dickey Mahoney was one of Bill Rodgers' Greater Boston Track Club teammates. Dickey had a full-time job as a mailman (40 hours a week), a wife, and 3 or 4 kids. Dickey would run 10 miles before work, and another 10 miles after work. He also ran a 20 mile long run on Sundays. 20 miles a day, 7 days a week, for 140 miles per week. In the 1979 Boston Marathon, he finally had his best race with a top 10 finish.

It was possible for guys to do the work, but it was a tremendous sacrifice. All Dickey did was run, work, and family. He had no time for anything else in his life. That's the sacrifice it took to be at or near that level if you weren't Frank or Bill.

Money talks wrote:

PED. Performance Enhancing Dough. He was taking money that was unavailable to his competitors. Accepting money back then was a lifetime ban.

It really was not by Shorter's time. You could make money. You just couldn't be so blatant about it that it was obvious.

HRE wrote:

Money talks wrote:

PED. Performance Enhancing Dough. He was taking money that was unavailable to his competitors. Accepting money back then was a lifetime ban.

It really was not by Shorter's time. You could make money. You just couldn't be so blatant about it that it was obvious.

Also, remember other country top athletes back than were well taken care of by their government. While a lot of the top US athletes back than were barely making a living with very little to no backing by the US government.

There had always been money in "amateur" running and everyone knew it. You just had to make sure it wasn't too obvious. I ran in several B level meets in Finland in 1975. There were a few big names in the meets. At the end of each meet a guy wearing a suit would come into the infield carrying a box filled with M0anilla envelopes. He'd set up a table and chair next to the track, put the box on the table, and athletes would line up to get the cash that was in the envelopes. There was a check list on the table and after each athlete got his money the guy in the suit would check the name off the list. An IAAF official with a camera could have turned up at one of those meets and brought the curtain down on at least a dozen careers.

John Aki Bua, the defending Olympic 400 intermediate champ was in every meet. He refused to run the hurdles and would only run the flat 400 because he was having an argument with the organizers who he thought were paying him less than they'd agreed to. Lydiard told me that every year about 20 European meet directors would call Ron Clarke to invite him to their meets. Ron's deal was always the same. He wanted a first class refundable airplane ticket, in those days that was around $1,000 per ticket. He'd cash 19 of them and fly to Europe on one of the tickets.But Ron always maintained that he was not making money from the sport. He said he was taking legitmate expenses because he was losing money when he was away from work and racing. The director of the Springbank Road Race told me that in 1977, maybe '78, but I think it was '77, he paid Jerome Drayton $100,000 to run his race.

Everyone knew this sort of thing went on. Shorter did risk being banned because he testified about all of this before Congress. The issue was not taking money but being honest about it.

HRE wrote:

Money talks wrote:

PED. Performance Enhancing Dough. He was taking money that was unavailable to his competitors. Accepting money back then was a lifetime ban.

It really was not by Shorter's time. You could make money. You just couldn't be so blatant about it that it was obvious.

Let's also remember Frank lead the way in lobbying to allow runners to accept prize monies as "training expenses" and the like. It took years, but eventually it benefited all.

To those who claim "weak competition", let's not forget in '72 defending Olympic

Marathon Champion Mamo Wolde (Ethiopia) was back to defend (taking bronze), Kip Keino "the Ryun Destroyer" (Kenya) won the steeple, Mike Boit (Kenya) took bronze in the 800m, and Yifter the Shifter (Ethiopia) was in the 5/10 but experienced bad luck (making up for it in the '80 games). Point being, there was no lack of Eastern African presence. There was, however, a lack of sketchy Italian "coaches/doctors" introducing African runners to the wonders of synthetic EPO (re: we all know it doesn't work for them anyway right ?), most likely because it didn't exist yet.

Frank was all that is right in sport - a true champion through and through. [As were those others - Wolde/Keino/Boit/Yifter, and so many more...]

All of the things are absolutely why Frank Shorter was so good. But no one here knows why Slorter was good. I am not sure he was....

Very lame attempt to piggyback on the Steve Clam meme. Couldn’t even come up with a misspelling that could be played upon. For example, Shirter would have opened up some gag responses. Back to school for you.

malmo wrote:

Shorter had an ideal body type, and trained ... a lot. Focused ... a lot. For years. He raced... a lot. He ran track races and road races, indoors, cross country, and marathons.

Did I mention he trained he trained a lot? ... and kept his eyes on the ball?

Sure and why was he so much slower than Viren and Clarke? Did he not train enough? In the end performance will always be about the intersection of talent (ability to repsond to training and the physical characteristics needed for a sport) and hard work.

Pathetic,, wrote:

Very lame attempt to piggyback on the Steve Clam meme. Couldn’t even come up with a misspelling that could be played upon. For example, Shirter would have opened up some gag responses. Back to school for you.

Careful, the class monitors here will send you to the back of the class for pointing out the obvious.

asfdasf wrote:

malmo wrote:

Shorter had an ideal body type, and trained ... a lot. Focused ... a lot. For years. He raced... a lot. He ran track races and road races, indoors, cross country, and marathons.

Did I mention he trained he trained a lot? ... and kept his eyes on the ball?

Sure and why was he so much slower than Viren and Clarke? Did he not train enough? In the end performance will always be about the intersection of talent (ability to repsond to training and the physical characteristics needed for a sport) and hard work.

Let me get your logical fallacy straight.... so because Shorter was only 6-7 seconds ("so much...") slower than Viren and Clarke that means that he didn't train enough? I see.... how much slower than Shorter were Viren and Clarke in the marathon?

How is what I said any different than your conclusion? It's the same thing.

Letsrun.com...where we learn that even Olympic champions aren't that great.

malmo wrote:

Shorter had an ideal body type, and trained ... a lot. Focused ... a lot. For years. He raced... a lot. He ran track races and road races, indoors, cross country, and marathons.

Did I mention he trained he trained a lot? ... and kept his eyes on the ball?

As an amateur psychologist, I would say he also showed signs of obsessive compulsive disorder, likely due to his alcoholic father's unpredictable behavior.

He found confidence and stability with his Florida training partner, Jack Bachelor.