I met Seb Coe today ... and I was wrong

So Coe was lying 20 years ago or he is lying today, either way not something we should be surprised about given he's a silver spoon up his arse Tory.

I don't think this confirms anything.

He is answering a question off the cuff, years after doing any real training.

My childhood walk to school gets longer every year.

London's 2012 Olympic bid in good shape for success: bid's chairman

DMH

607 words

1 June 2005

16:57

Agence France Presse

English

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2005 All reproduction and presentation rights reserved.

LONDON, June 1 (AFP) -

The man in charge of London's bid to host the 2012 Olympics said Wednesday he expected a "good" report from evaluators due to publish their findings next week on the five cities battling to hold the Games.

Lord Sebastian Coe also hoped to swing the judges in his favour at a July 6 meeting in Singapore to decide the winning city, by travelling there with a strong team including Prime Minister Tony Blair and footballer David Beckham.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is due to announce Monday its analysis on the potential of London, Madrid, Moscow, New York and Paris to host the prestigious contest after an evaluation committee toured the cities.

"I am expecting that executive summary to be good," said Coe, the London 2012 chairman.

"I don't see why it shouldn't be, although I take absolutely nothing for granted," he told a lunchtime briefing with a group of foreign correspondents.

"The evaluation phase is probably more important now than it has ever been," said Coe, who has headed London's Olympic campaign for the past year.

"A good report is not enough to get you across the line on its own, (but) a bad report would be a problem at this stage."

London had pulled out all the stops to improve its often criticised transport system, build sports facilities and plan a sprawling village for the world's top athletes, said Coe, himself a runner and two-times Olympic gold medal holder.

Its bid also has the full backing of Blair, meaning that work could begin on the ambitious plans on July 7 -- the day after the IOC is due to select the winning city in Singapore.

After Monday's evaluation report "the ship sails for Singapore physically and metaphorically," said Coe.

"Everybody on that boat has their sleeves rolled up and is working about as hard as they could work and that is from the prime minister down."

The London chairman and his bidding team are due to travel to Ghana at the end of June to face off against the other candidate cities before the African National Olympic Committees before giving a final presentation to the IOC panel in Singapore.

"This for me in a way is the last lap of an Olympic odyssey," Coe said.

"I would genuinely love to be a part of a team that brings the Games -- the greatest show on earth -- back to the greatest city on earth."

On top of backing from the government, Coe said the British public was also increasingly excited about the possibility of a London Olympics. Sport plays a huge part in daily life here, with 25 million people waching football matches each season, half a million expected to turn up for the tennis at Wimbledon in a fortnight and the same again watching the London Marathon in April.

"When it comes to unrivaled passion for sport you are here. This is the country that can provide that," Coe boasted.

If London does win the bid it will enjoy a multi-billion-pound (dollar, euro) makeover during the next seven years, with a huge stadium included in the planning. Train lines have already been revamped and will be able to shuttle some quarter of a million people an hour to the Olympic Park.

An online survey published Wednesday, however, cast a shadow over Coe's Olympic dreams by revealing that Internet users worldwide voted Paris as their preferred host city, with Madrid and London coming in as joint second choice.

This kind of stuff is why, when the same "discussion" occurred in the monster Renato thread, I tried to encourage Marius to lay the facts out there, because Marius was coached by Peter Coe and has actually seen the logbooks. And the number Marius came out with was 45 mpw, NOT counting warmups and cooldowns, so the total number comes to 70 mpw max--and this is a number that Peter has mentioned a number of times in the British Milers Club Journal.

Anybody who coaches the Horwill system (I do for track only) knows that the volume that can be tolerated is less than for other methods because of all the training close to race pace. Mortals can't normally handle much more than 40 mpw while hitting all five paces, and Coe getting in 60-70 plus all the weight work puts him in the El Guerrouj "superman" (to use Antonio's word) level. 100 mpw would be more like the steroid-enhanced level.

Martin,

Thanks for sharing, and the clarification about Coe.

Now, we can work on Yegorova, and Racliffe. :)

UK boy wrote:

people this is BS. there has not been a lunch with Coe this week.

Too right, Coe does not eat lunch. There was never any mention of lunch in his training diaries, and Peter Coe never gave any details of his son's annual lunch progression.

actually, there was one mention of a lunch in Coe's Secret Diary of 1981. he ate a turkey and cheese sandwich, but, and here's the catch, he ate it backwards and without using his left molars. i've been emulating this move for 14 years, i feel like i'll run in the 140-142 range this summer.

LOVE,

bershawn jackson

Is it not possible to reconcile the two sides of the argument? People seem to accept that Coe ran 70mpw, and now we are told he may have got as high as 100mpw. Isn't it possible that the 100mpw figure is the max, all told, figure, whereas 70mpw is the average winter figure, not including warm-ups, warm downs etc. (which Coe tended not to include)?

Speed Kills wrote:

Anybody who coaches the Horwill system (I do for track only) knows that the volume that can be tolerated is less than for other methods because of all the training close to race pace. Mortals can't normally handle much more than 40 mpw while hitting all five paces, and Coe getting in 60-70 plus all the weight work puts him in the El Guerrouj "superman" (to use Antonio's word) level. 100 mpw would be more like the steroid-enhanced level.

I know Horwill coached runners who do 90-100 mpw. I thought the point was that you varied the quantities of the 5 paces throughout the year. So if you're clocking 100 during the winter you're not going to be doing much of that at 1500m pace. During the track season you'll be doing lower mileage but more of it at a faster pace.

Great post Martin, thanks for sharing that. Takes a big person to admit they are wrong and you could have easily not shared what you had learned today. Let's face it folks, there is only one way to the top. Hard work and lots of it.

What I find interesting is that in his statement, Coe apparently expressed his training volume in MILES rather than kilometers. Since when do the Brits express anything in English system units, especially when speaking to a British audience?

Most English people still use miles and yards to talk about distances. Road signs are still in miles as well.

This is vintage LetsRun:

Start with the position that Coe did low mileage. Argue it in the face of any evidence to the contrary. Then, when the man himself confirms it is not true, call him a liar.

Sorry Martin, you've been duped. That wasn't really Lord Coe, but Malmo in disguise doing Monty Python imitations.

Martin,

You're a good man (especially because you've confirmed my own views on this subject). It probably shouldn't surprise me that others are now calling you a liar, but it does.

I wonder how many British runners failed to get close to their potential because they actually believed that 30-mile weeks might be sufficient.

Now if we could get Aouita to confess to his actual training mileage, that would REALLY be something . . . .

Everyone says that they run 100mpw even Mo Greene.

I suppose you could always ask Coe's ex-wife how often he told the truth. Especially on those gotta-work-late-at-parliment nights with his girlfriend.

Average_Joe wrote:

This is vintage LetsRun:

Start with the position that Coe did low mileage. Argue it in the face of any evidence to the contrary.....

No, wait, what YOU are saying is vintage letsrun. Why do you think people " Start with the position that Coe did low mileage" ???? Conspiracy?!? No, instead, many people started with that premise based on DOZENS of quotes by Seb himself, Peter Coe, and Fank Horwill. And what was the "evidence to the contrary" ? People who believed running as well as Coe did off of low mileage was impossible? Some real evidence that he did not always count warm-ups? Ok, a little evidence to suggest some of the lower totals should be edged up in amount.

But now we have ANOTHER exact quote from Seb. It is revealing, and will make me rethink my own beliefs on Coes' training. But where are we now?

MANY past quotes by Seb himself, Peter Coe, and Fank Horwill that Seb almost never (if ever) broke 70 miles per week.

A new quote by Seb that he did upwards towards 100 some weeks and some past instances that show he did not always count his warm-ups.

How do we come up with a conclusive opinion based on such contradictary evidence?

Looks like we might never know for sure, since these chararcters have apparently changed their tune so much we might as call them the Beatles.

But I will say this: it is a good day for the "high mileage is the only way" proponents. I FULLY expect to see this quote of Seb's (via Martin) on the front page of LetsRun tomorrow!!!

I have always thought that the low mileage BS was meant to psych out his competitors.