How on earth did Bannister & Chataway run the times they did on this schedule?

That track has been a synthetic surface for years. I ran a mile on it in 2007; inside the dressing area there is a glassed box with the finishing post & three shovelfuls of the rocks they ran on back in the day. If Mottram ran 3:56 he ran on the surface I ran. Yes; Bannister would/could've run 3:52 or better on today's best Mondo.

coach d wrote:

Dennis Reynolds wrote:

No. 3:59 mile means jack sh*t nowadays. That will barely qualify you for NCAA indoor meet, big whoop.

What a moron (again). Bannister ran that time on the cinders on the Iffley Road Track. The track record for the mile is held by Craig Mottram in 3:56 something. This is the same Craig Mottram who ran 3:48 one year later. You COULD say that Bannister's time on that track would be worth 3:50-52 in Oslo these days.

YOU go run a mile on Iffley (if you're smart enough to figure out how) and tell us how much you took our your PR.

Neal Bascomb's book, The Perfect Mile gives good insight into their training. So does Bannister's book, The Four Minute Mile.

Bannister was training to break four. After a fourth place in the 1500 at the '52 Olympics, everything he ran was for that purpose. He believed scientifically he could do it on 25-28 mpw.

I did a version of this in my late 40's with a much more modest goal but still a challenge for my abilities.

I focused on the mile. It took about 8 months but I hit my goal. Like Bannister I had to remind myself that I was a miler. So I wasn't a 5-10k runner training for the mile. I was a miler. If someone said, let's go run ten miles I said to myself, do I need that run? Generally the answer was no.

What I needed to be able to was time trials and weekly reps or intervals in times that predicted my goal time.

I read Bannister's "First Four Minutes", aka The Four Minute Mile in high school. He ran intense interval workouts. Yes, lots of distance can get you fit.

But, let's face it, you get race sharp running intervals. A miler can run fast times on intervals, it's a fact.

Bannister admits he was not ready for 3 rounds in the '52 Olympics, but he sure was ready to run fast as heck in '54.

you can get in fine shape for 10k and down on a steady diet of intervals. Of course you might not reach your potential this way. Its really longer distances that require high mileage.

You can get in great shape for half marathon and up with nothing but very long hard tempos and long easy runs. Of course you might not reach your potential this way. Its really shorter distances...

He ran that fast because with modern shoes, tracks, training, nutrition, strength and recovery work, and competition he probably would have had PRs ranging from something like 1:46 to 13:00.

[quote]Horst Girth wrote:

I read Bannister's "First Four Minutes", aka The Four Minute Mile in high school. He ran intense interval workouts. Yes, lots of distance can get you fit.

But, let's face it, you get race sharp running intervals. A miler can run fast times on intervals, it's a fact.

You've missed the point which is how much faster that would have run if doing the training they do nowadays

Thanks for the comment UK coach, but really my point is that Bannister smoked the competition in '54 on mainly interval training. In the times he competed, his training and talent put him on top as a competitor and record setter.

Peter Snell added distance with amazing results a few years later.

Talent of course is key in both cases, both physical and mental.

But I take your point, they would have run faster with contemporary methods.

Watch videos of Bannister and Prefontaine and you will see one thing in common that almost ZERO runners do nowadays (that I have seen)and I think accounted for much of their success. That is they ran with their heads LEANING BACKWARDS! They lean their heads back and their legs,hips and chest go FORWARDS! It is a very smooth easy relaxed way to run once you get used to it. Chi running and just about EVERY coach and running method out there nowadays tell runners to lean FORWAD. Go for a run and lean your head BACK and see what happens!

Thanks for those fascinating insights.

Although the volume is low, I would not describe that as an easy training schedule. Chataway as basically throwing down 3 to 4 pretty tough and intense workouts per week - much harder that doing 70 to 80 moderately paced miles each week. Maybe Chataway and Bannister had a good deal of natural speed (perhaps ~50 secs for 400m?) and they were able to tolerate this intensity of training. Maybe a "slower" runner would struggle with this intensity, although Brasher apparently did a similar sort of training. Assuming the warm ups and warm downs were minimal and that those guys had easy access to a track I guess that they were really minimising the time they spent training. They had a life to live after all.

Looking at the race results those guys produced, I imagine that a lot of amateurs with limited time could learn from this style of training which seems to have gone out of vogue. Do any coaches follow Franz Stampfl's training philosophies nowadays?

thanks for that, and for ending the running boom.

coach d wrote:

Bannister has said that he didn't put the 3 X 1.5 mile in his book because he thought it would be too hard for people reading the book to attempt.

One thing that is in the book is that he got to 10X400 in 57 seconds with 2 min before the sub 4 attempt, not what is listed above, and then they backed off the 400 times for comp.

Compare some of the training (and idiotic comments) to what Dr. Li said Lagat ran in 2009 (his second consecutive double medal performance remember) in the winter:

Mon AM 25 min jog

.......PM 8 miles @ 5:50

Tue 7 miles, last 4 in 20:11

Wed 30 min easy

Thu Hills 5X800, 2:40/2 min rec

.......3 mi wu & cd

Fri 30 min easy

Sat 12 mi in 70 min

I'm sure the posters above have run a lot faster than 3:26.34 due to their much higher mileage.

Li left out Bernie's drug regimen when he listed his Winter Training Sched.

I think I will try this as an experiment.

'Looking at the race results those guys produced, I imagine that a lot of amateurs with limited time could learn from this style of training which seems to have gone out of vogue. Do any coaches follow Franz Stampfl's training philosophies nowadays?[/quote]'

I have Franz Stampfl's book, although its fallen apart. He was advising rather than coaching them and his sessions were much harder than those done by Bannister and Chataway, more like those done by Zatopek. I think Chataway in particlar benefitted from this as his times started to improve and he got the WR beating Kutz

Stampfl had the philosopy that if you were a good club runner you could become an international. Although he also offered the theory which became realitiy that an interntaional ditance runner had to be good at all distances and the WR holder would be a 11 second 100m man. The pro's semm to have replaced that bit with being able to do 12 seconds (or is that 12.98!) and using EPO?

Zatopek and Stamfl training got carrried away with intervals run every day and lacked basic mileage and tempo runs etc but all training evolves over time

I was very amused. I don't know what this has to do with the thread topic, though. Kept reading and looking for a tie in. Well done.

call back wrote:

...

Well, I should have thought that through and known better, but I wasn’t really thinking sharply at that point, and hindsight is truly 20/20. This little "potion" he’d given me, as it slid harshly down my gullet, seemed to ignite a truly satanic fire inside me, and within twenty seconds I filled the car seat with lumps and puddles of Japanese poo mojo, and my wife turned the car around and headed straight to the hospital. Live and learn…

In an Interview Chataway said that people advised him not to over train and risk burn out. Chataway said that if he trained like Coe or Zatopek he would have run "..a lot faster."

Strongly, strongly suspect testosterone use in Bannister. Both were well-muscled - well above average - and remember Paavo Nurmi had been using test in the 1920s. The Nazis used it extensively during WW 2 to increase soldier performance.

Test - was a well-known 'tonic' in Europe during the 1950s, not illegal for this use.

Bannister was undertrained and not supremely talented, if he were, he would have won the olympics. He had something in his favor that does not compute - this was likely testosterone.

Test - increases EPO production too and improves recovery from workouts while increasing strength. TDF riders use it for endurance.

What is life?? wrote:

Scary to think what they could have run if they ran more miles.

You don't need to run a ton of miles to be a good miler. You need to be able to run fast.

And you'll notice that their times at 3 miles and beyond weren't so good, so it's not that surprising.