Troop/Riley training. No magic

I mean, yes.

But if you define "no magic" as being a training plan that includes long runs, hills, fartlek, tempos, intervals, and consistent mileage - then no one's training is magical.

"No secrets. Just week in week out, month in month out, year in year out - good/ solid training." L. Troop

Simple, Australian model program—long term, wide angle training. Troopy is smart, and genuinely cares for his people. Combine that with Riley’s innate talent and drive, good stuff is bound to happen.

No magic? We have a long run, a medium-long run (both probably with decent intensity and/or progression, one session, and another session. That's 4 hard training days.

Common marathon training is to have 2 longer runs like a long run and medium-long-run, with intensity in them (like 1k reps, mile reps, a progression, longer segments at MP, etc.).

So most runners combine the 2 "sessions" WITH their longer runs, this athlete has session 1, session 1, medium LR AND 2.5-3h LR ALL in ONE WEEK.

For most people, this would be way too much when training for a marathon, and shouldn't be copied.

The Medium Long Run on Wednesday is not hard, it’s at a recovery pace. For days like that my college coach used to say “ go as long as you want but you have to very easy.”

The long run varies but typically has some progressions. It is t a full long run workout like most marathon programs.

So it’s really two workouts and a progressive long run, which is similar to most training programs out there. No secrets.

eatkyjogger stevr wrote:

Please stop commenting on things as though you are an expert. Through your posts over time you have proven yourself to be anything but.[/quote]

Runner Phil is a nice bloke. And he’s KYTFO. So stop your crying you lil puzz and chill. Or me and my team will rip you a new one.[/quote]

This is lame, even for you Phil

Under the Aussie system particularly the Wednesday run was around 10-12 miles progressive. Generally when coaching athletes it's run how you feel based on how hard the Tuesday session was. Well done to Lee and Jake

All I want to say is CONGRATULATIONS to Troop and Riley. They committed to a plan and executed. Phenomenal. And Laura almost made it as well if she didn't have a glute medius weakness on her right leg (watch Seth DeMoor video, she just couldn't generate the power with her femur rotation). I was in Atlanta, it was awesome to experience.

To add more content, the coach also posted additional info on Twitter.

Hills x 60secs hard.

Fartlek efforts at 2:40-3min/ km pace but solid recovery floats of 3:15-3:30min/ km pace.

Intervals start at 10K pace & work down to 5K pace.

Tempo’s usually at 1/2M pace

60s Hills - which coach/training program uses that? Daniels, certainly not. Tinman? More like 30s hills. Canova, Hudson, Magness? Lots of 8-12s short all-out hill sprints. Many college/D1 programs use 60s hills frequently, but it's not standard in most training programs.

Fartlek - again a unique, special session. Fartleks are common, but to keep the recovery portion at a steady/moderate pace is usually done in workouts like 8x(1k-1k) with alternating the 1k's. But doing them in Fartlek form is very interesting and definitely not part of most standard training programs.

Intervals - standard. An Australian staple is 6-10x1k reps.

Tempo Run - more like a Daniel's tempo than a Tinman tempo. Probably 20-30 min duration. It should be assigned at 1 hour pace, and not HM pace. Sure, for Riley and others coincidentally HM pace = 1 hour pace, but for a 2 hour HM hobby jogger the tempo would be WAY too slow.

When coaching only elite distance runners it's easy to assign tempos at HM pace - since all of them run around 60 min. But for hobby joggers, that can have a very low VO2MAX in the 40s and 50s and only able to run a 1h30m or 2h00m half, the tempo wouldn't be the same as for the elites. On the other hand, it makes sense to give elites the harder workout so HM pace might actually appropriate for all runners for a 20-30 min tempo. I actually like this tempo at HM pace idea.

Saw Troop mention hills repeatedly. Training in Colorado at altitude with most (maybe all) long and medium long runs done over hilly road courses likely helped for Atlanta. Similar to Wetmore’s cross country training. A lot of the other runners may have had targeted hill sessions but I doubt as many had hills as a daily, semi-daily component.

I’m assuming the irony of the title of this thread is lost on the OP.. No magic? No magic except for one thing. You must absolutely be wearing the shoe that scientist nicknamed “the magic” when they first started testing them as they couldn’t believe how good they were.

I listened to the Troop interview on the Citius podcast the other day. I left it finishing a bit frustrated as I felt there were three obvious questions not asked.

1) Troop said he though Riley was in 2:11-2:12 shape before Chicago and he ran 2:10. Was that the result of the shoes?

2) Did he think before Atlanta that Riley was much fitter than before Chicago? If he was 211-212 before Chicago, what did he rate him before Atlanta? Was he surprised he ran 2:10 flat basically on such a hilly course? I mean that’s easily a 2:08 in Chicago in my opinion.

3) If you put Jake Riley in Lee Troops shoes and have him run the same races as Troop did in 2003-2004, what does he think Jake would run (Troop’s pb is 2:09:49).

That being said, I LOVE Jake and Lee’s story. Lee’s coaching seems VERY smart. So many people try to add more or change things. After Chicago, he said, “We’re going to do the same damn thing for Atlanta. You ran great. Hopefully you are just more consistent and your body absorbs it better.”

Pretty sure the "no magic" is in reference to an infamous coach who posts here claiming he has a "magic" training system.

Sara Hall ran 2:22 at age 36. What do you think she is in Vaporflys rojo? 2:20? Is CJ Albertson a 2:07 guy on a flat course? Would Fauble have run 2:07 in Boston? At some point give it a rest and stop assuming the competitor shoes are 2 mins slower like they’re worse than Adidas Boost shoes.

El Cheapo wrote:

Pretty sure the "no magic" is in reference to an infamous coach who posts here claiming he has a "magic" training system.

I understood the reference.

Imagine how much faster Riley would have been if he was given some magic.

Since when was Tinman mentioned as an influential coaching philosophy alongside Daniels, Canova et al? Heck, you’ve mentioned Tinman and didn’t even mention Lydiard - Troop’s biggest influence and a coach that actually had world beating athletes!

Yes yes and yes

Why does every one of Tripp’s sessions have to fit into another coach’s philosophy? To say that Tinman and Magness never use 60s hills, as you imply, is not true. Both coaches have used this type of workout. Troop is just giving examples of some workouts that they did. It’s not perfect. It’s a lot by feel. Plenty of others use the Fartlek session he mentions as well. The paces and terms used are generic terms. They mean different things to nearly everybody. My definition of tempo is different than Tinman’s and Daniels’ and etc.

Yeah, those 3 questions aren't very good.

Please let it go. Post these crazy ramblings on a personal blog, no one comes here to read this drivel. It makes it so hard to come here and support this site (aka you) when all you do is keep going on about this.