Nothing new about distance training has been discovered since January 1, 1980.

1 month out, hammering the Nangali 40k @ 7152ft.

Hardloper wrote:

Nothing. Everything since then has been re-hashing of the same concepts already understood by runners in the late 70's / early 80's. All improvements since then have only come through better technology, faster courses, and a larger global talent pool of participation.

OK, here are some specifics. Most of this doesn't go back much before the late 1990's as I wasn't coaching back then:

(1) Heavy weights improve running economy by a few percent. I mean weights like reps of 6 to near failure or above 80%. More than a few years ago everyone seemed to believe in low weights high reps for distance runners, which we now understand to be totally worthless.

(2) The well-known Paavolainen paper of explosive strength training

. They took 18 min "serious" 5K runers, cut the mileage by 25% and added plyos, weights lifted rapidly, and 200m sprints, and the runners ran faster 5ks by something like 30 seconds.

(3) Neural recruitment in high lactate events (400-1500). Researchers in scandinavia in the late 1990's instrumented some 400 meter runners doing all-out 400s and saw new fibers being recruited as old ones died from acidosis. Reason to do heavy squats or Canova-style hill sprints.

(4) Lactate is your friend. Lactate is consumed for fuel by slow-twitch fibers and heart and some other muscle fibers. This is what happens in "lactate clearance." The so-called "lactate shuttle" didn't come around until around 2000.

(5) Stretching is useless for injury prevention, Landmark study in the British Journal of Medicine in 2000.

(6) "The End Of Periodization." Landmark paper by the late Prof. Yuri Verkhoshansky in 1997. It didn't shoot down all periodization, but specifically block periodization, which is what Lydiard is. Lydiard is basically a fail by modern methods and most everybody from Glenn Mills in Jamaica to Canova uses some form of concurrent periodization.

(7) Veronique Billat's vVo2max work, which improves both endurance and speed.

How many more do you want? Why do you think people like me get paid to go to conferences, anyway?

Forget about Lydiard or 1960. We know a lot more now than we did in 1995. What we "know" now will be obsoleted soon enough.

Rodgers didn't run Boston in '76 so of course he trained through it.

Using races as training is still not the same as doing race like efforts in training.

Cerutty figured out the heavy weight thing long ago. Not new.

SMJO wrote:

Rodgers didn't run Boston in '76 so of course he trained through it.

Using races as training is still not the same as doing race like efforts in training.

Baltimore marathon was December '76. He ran Boston in '77 (DNF'd). There are probably better examples with him.

They may as well have been the same thing in their cases. Kipsang running a "2:06" marathon effort and Rogers running a low-key marathon basically accomplish the same thing that Canova says - a very hard effort followed by enough recovery.

Just because a lot of Ex Phys guys say this or that does´t mean that it´s good training. They have always preached that high mileage is useless and that you should do a lot of intense intervals, explosive strength, plyos instead. Look what happened when American distance runners started to follow that recipe.

Lasse Viren would still win a European Championship with his old fashioned training methods if you removed all African born Europeans.

Agreed. All performance gains since the 70s have been due to advances in doping

In my opinion, few things changed in training about short distances (800 - 1500m).

One of the best designed strategies is, without any doubt, the "mathematic approach" of Peter Coe with Seb.

It's not a case that 800m really didn't improve too much in almost 30 years, and 1500m only a little bit better.

Analysing the top 30 performers all-time, we can see the following distribution per year in all the Olympic distances, limited at male events only :

800 1500 5000 10000 3000st Marathon

80 - 90 : 6 4 - - 3 -

91 - 00 : 8 8 7 6 10 -

01 - 10 : 10 13 15 15 8 7

11 - 13 : 6 5 8 9 9 23

How it's possible to see, in the during the 10 years period between 2001 - 2010, we can find the most important improvement under the point of view of QUANTITY, which is a parameter more important than looking at the top 5 only.

Some period was characterized by some champion of superior level. This fact provoked big interested, also in normal people, for track and field, and organisers of the big meetings prepared many competitions for trying to better the WR, with several pacers at very fast and even speed.

Due to this fact, we find "groups" of performances, during the best years, run in the same race : typical example are the 800m of the period 2011-2013, when 5 of the 6 performers improved their PB following Rudisha in Olympics Games.

So, we need to remember that the best improvement of 5000 and 10000m during the period 2001-2010 is mainly due to the presence of Kenenisa Bekele, who increased the interest for the long distances in meeting as Bruxelles and Hengelo, and gave the opportunity to run fast for all the athletes competing with him.

Same thing looking at steeple during the period 1991-2000 : behind Moses Kiptanui, always pacing fast, the athletes had the possibility to enhance their performances, finding perfect conditions for running fast.

Completely different is the picture we can have looking at Marathon.

In top 30, we find only 2 athletes with their best in 2003, and 28 during the last 5 years (2008-2013).

To think that this trend is due to the improvement of external factors (shoes : in many cases were better 40 years ago ; roads : I don't see differences in the quality of tarmac in Fukuoka between 1980 and today ; supplements : about Marathon runners, I think the specialists of 40-30 years ago used more supplements than today), and also, looking at track, the quality of spikes and tracks (tartan existed from 1968, and for long distances continues to remain the best surface), is to refuse the idea that training changed in direction of more volume of quality.

Of course, running is Always "only" running. But little differences in speed must be considered "different means of training", since can provoke great changes in the physiology of the athletes.

This involves a change of mentality, for example : in periods where running 13:00 in 5000 put you out of prizes in Diamond League, who wants to remain a runner of 5000m trains with the idea that 12:50 - 12:55 MUST BE A NORMAL GOAL. When in 1987 Said Aouita went for the first time under 13:00 in Rome, his performance seemed something absolutely superhuman ; today, a lot of athletes running under 13:00 are totally unknown, and finish a season with an income of less than 20,000 USD.

In 1980, there was not the idea to use long intervals on track. A lot of volume with long slow run, many competitions (that saved the shape of the athletes, producing the intensity they didn't use in training), and on track only short distances with short recovery, many times burning the athletes.

I remember an incredible training during the World Universitary Games in Torino (Turin), 1970, with Dick Buerkle running 30 times 400m under 60" (the fastest 58") with 100m recovery jogging in 30" / 40", continuing running (so really 30 times 500m, 15 km on the track), 6 days before the race. In the race, he ran... more than 31' !

About Marathon, Toshihiko Seko used running more than 300 km per week, with a peak of 480 (average almost 70 km per week). During their preparation, Japanese Marathon runners used, may be twice, running 100 km continuously (80 for the ladies), a process they called "mentalizazion".

Now we changed completely these absurd training, having only more the effect to destroy the body structures (because kilometers are in any case consumption for tendons and jointures) without any other benefit under the bioenergetic and organic point of view.

The best Marathon runners in the World run about 200-230 km per week, that is not low mileage, but is not comparable with the mileages of 30-40 years ago.

The big difference : inside this mileage, the VOLUME OF INTENSITY is very much bigger than in the past.

So, the real change of today is not in the volume, is not in the intensity, BUT IS IN THE VOLUME OF INTENSITY. And this fact can also explain why, shortest is the distance, more difficult is to do something new : THE INTENSITY IS ALREADY AT THE LIMIT, and the only room of improvement is to work on the neural situation.

Like example, look at the event of 400m.

In the Olympic Final of Rome 1960 (not synthetic track), two athletes, Otis Davis and Karl Kaufmann, ran the same time (44"9), after 4 different rounds, with qf and sf the same day (one day before the final, without resting day as today). With their times, they could be in top 6 in WCh this year, and in OG last year.

Their training was vey much different from today : not lifting weights, not using specific plyometric exercises, not pulling some tyre, not training twice per day.

But they did the MOST IMPORTANT PART OF TRAINING : for example, 3 times 300m at max speed with 15' recovery, and in any competition there were several rounds. Particularly, in the activity inside the US Universities the best athletes ran 100 -200 - 400 - 110 hs - long jump, and relays, using as training a lot of competitions.

So, no periodization, but a long competition season for developing the specific quality.

Now, athletes do this type of intensity in training, for having time to use a lot of other training systems, following some precise periodization.

But at the end of every talk, what did change in the dimension of performances ?

Jeez, get your head out of your fvckin ass. There have been substantial developments in the sport - periodization, advanced drills, aqua training, importance of rest, and particularly nutrition.

Hi Renato:

Great post! Along the same lines, could you talk about how the new "turbo diesel" marathoners would test on the Farragiana-Gigliotti test compared to Bordin and Baldini? Thanks.

Yet lets run continues on...

What's described here is a really hard run of two hours plus. People have been doing that for at least fifty years. Of course faster runners will cover more distance in that time than slower ones will but that's not a training innovation.

SMJO wrote:

Rodgers didn't run Boston in '76 so of course he trained through it.

Using races as training is still not the same as doing race like efforts in training.

Why not?

Interesting Renato, no long intervals in 1980? What do you consider a long interval?

Isn't the idea of a classic "tempo run" (20 minutes at one hour pace) from after 1980?

There is ONE CONCEPT that applies to cycling that eventually EVERYONE will do that only myself and couple of others do now. That is MOVE YOUR SEAT UP one inch slide it forward and SLANT IT DOWN as much as you can. You will go FIVE PERCENT FASTER! you will also be more comfortable and your bike will handle better. Try it![/quote]

This works for tri bikes but puts all your weight on your arms for road riding which kills you on long rides, plus moving your seat forward allows you to increase your cadence but at the expense of power....so, not new, not useful.

Renato Canova wrote:

In the Olympic Final of Rome 1960 (not synthetic track), two athletes, Otis Davis and Karl Kaufmann, ran the same time (44"9), after 4 different rounds, with qf and sf the same day (one day before the final, without resting day as today). With their times, they could be in top 6 in WCh this year, and in OG last year.

Plus they ran those times on a chewed up dirt track.

Long intervals are distances as 3000m and 2000m.

For giving an example, one of the specific training used by Kenenisa Bekele (and by Salvatore Antibo) was 4 x 2000m with times among 5'10"and 5'12" (Kenenisa) and 5'28" (Antibo) in altitude (Keenisa in St. Moritz, Antibo in Sestriere), with 4' rest in between, plus a final km (Bekele 2'27" - Antibo 2'32").

And the intensification of the speed and the frequency of "tempo" runs : it's now common, for top runners, to run in training 15 km between 43' and 44', or 20 km in less than 1 hour, or 10 km under 29'.

The first athlete running "fast" his long run in training was Ron Clarke in the period '64 - 68'. He ran sometimes 15 km in 45', and at that time it seemed something incredible. Now, this is common training, with still superior intensity, and is used by ALL the best African runners.

We could change the balance between volume and intensity of training, because had the opportunity to work with athletes very strong and young, but particularly because, when we start working with them, they didn't have too many ideas about training, so accepted to learn.

Now we can say the knowledge of modern training is more in the mind of African runners than American or European, too much linked with the past, or too much innovative, forgetting the good teachments of the past.

Past is experience, with something good that we must continue to do, and something obsolete, that we must change. Remaining in the past is wrong in every field, but it's also wrong to try to change everything, withount analysing, in the name of some "modernity" that, many times, never can produce the same results.

Best post ever Renato!