The Quenton Cassidamius wrote:
Most of his athletes do not run 130-170 miles a week. I know that Mosop runs 120 miles a week and I think that is standard for most of his top Marathoners.}
Not true. You need to read the Canova threads and the posts by Canova himself all over this site. Canova says most marathon mileage programs that are Lydiard based are way too low in mileage. He has women marathoners running weeks well over 150 mpw as he does the men. You don't have your facts.
[His athletes work very hard and are very talented but his training has definitely brought the Marathon to a whole knew level.]
Wrong again, there are at least 20 other marathoners running the same kind of times that ARE NOT coached by Canova and are NOT using Canova's program.
[Mileage is important but you cannot simplify training down to just mileage.
Yes that is true but very high mileage and workouts at race pace are the key to his program. But surprise, surprise they are the key to all successful programs. YOu can't successfully self-promote yourself by just telling people to run high mileage and do a lot of workouts at or near race pace. You need to make it sound impressive. Don't just tell your marathoners to do "long hard runs" you need to tell them run 24.5 miles at 94.67% of marathon pace, that sounds much more impressive. You can't say do interval "slightly slower than race pace" you need to say "in the Specific phase run your interval between 92.4 and 93.7% of race pace. You can't say do a tempo a little shorter than races distance but a little faster. You need to say run 30K at 105.8% of race pace.