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

Frank N. Stein, MD wrote:

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!!!

Thank you, thank you. But it was no big feat to predict that, since reading wejo's mind is as easy as reading a children's book.

NEXT UP: dismantling the supposed low mileage totals of great middle-distance/distance runners such as Spivey, Padilla, Krummenacker, Lagat, Steve Jones (low'ish for a 2:07 guy), etc, etc Before LetsRun is done, there will not be a single national class runner in history who ran under 100 miles for any week in his life.

Of course we are at "maybe". Not for me personally, but I recognize that others don't believe what Coe himself says. I acknowledge this with the word "ostensibly" so we don't have to repeat the same "did too" "did not" statements again and again.

"Atypical Letsrun Poster" said Coe was lying. and "Miler Man" said his father was lying. That is who I was responding to. Then you jumped in.

How would you know what I thought about previous debates on this subject? Is there some smoking gun post of mine out there that belies what I've said here? I think he did higher mileage than 40-50 and I have long been aware that he didn't count some easy mileage in those totals. Long before this thread, anyway.

Regardless, the difference is that in previous debates on this subject, I don't recall anyone calling the Coe's liars, Frank.

The only "contradictory" statements that I have seen said that the Coes did not count warmup/cooldown and other "light" mileage in the totals when reporting those numbers.

I have no desire to convince you one way or the other. But then again, I never saw you calling him a liar so I don't see that I have a debate with you.

So which Seb Coe is lying? The Seb Coe today or the Seb Coe from the 80's. I still strongly believe that Seb was a fairly low mileage guy, but time has a way of tainting how we perceived our training from 20 years ago. It is well documented that Seb was a low mileage guy and he and his father showed the actual workouts and weekly totals. Maybe he ran one 100 mile week and now he remembers it as him doing a lot of those, but I certainly don't buy it. Ovett was great on high mileage and Coe was great on lower mileage. Accept that for what it is worth; there is more than one way to reach the top.

Good for you Martin. I enjoyed those previous posts with you and trackhead where we debated the issue, I posted as JonnyO then.

The issue was really about including or not including the warm ups and cool downs which must make up a substantial part of his mileage in the late seventies- early eighties.

Thanks for your input and honesty.

On page 228 of Kenny Moore's book "Best Efforts: World Class Runners and Races," he quotes Seb Coe as saying he never runs more than 50 miles in the winter and even less in the spring (doesn't say anything about the summer). I've always doubted he did such little mileage, but the truth of the matter is that the myth of low mileage was perpetuated by Coe himself.

That's what myself and trackhead and a few others debated. He was probably trying to psych people out, most runners do this one way or another.

There was clearly a lot of gamesmanship going on in those days - and perhaps for good reason.

Imagine, if you will, a small Island nation such as Britain producing 4 to 7 world class middle distance runners within the same 10-year span (Coe, Cram, Ovett, Elliot, Williamson, Sharpe, Crabb, McKean, et al) and where everyone talks to everyone. With so many athletes competing for so few places, it's no surprise that most of them kept their cards pretty close to their chests.

In fact, I recall a Steve Scott interview (Trackhead, you may want to hunt this down) where he had 'complained' about the fact that Cram would constantly under-represent his training to make it seem like his performances were all from "natural ability".

Clearly, I'm at a bit of a crossroads here, but I suspect that kind of low-mileage kidology was quite common back then.

Martin

You arrogant Americans! I said 100 kilometers per week, not 100 miles per week. You arrogant Americans think everything is about miles instead of kilometers. In fact, I renounce my mile World record. What? Pardon me for a moment, my assistant is trying to tell me something. What the...the blimey just told me that my mile World record has been broken. Why am I always the last one to know about things around here? You damn arrogant Americans probably have something to do with it.

You high mileage advocates just can't accept that many people have been successful off of lower mileage. Yes many people have been successful off of high mileage, because that is what worked for them. But to discount anyone that says they did lower mileage is complete crap. Seb Coe was a low mileage runner and he is now saying he did more than he really did because he wants to make his training look better than it did, or perhaps for some other strange reason. Who really knows or cares why? I suppose if Sir Roger Bannister came along and said he really was doing 100 mile weeks instead of 30, you would all believe it and use it to "prove your point" that only high mileage works. Get over yourself people. There are many ways to train.

"he wants to make his training look better than it did, or perhaps for some other strange reason"

Just so I get this straight - I'm slow on the uptake - you're telling me that a double gold medalist and multiple world record holder (not to mention millionaire and international sporting icon) has some hidden need to "make his training look better than it did"?

I'm not - at least for the moment - advocating anything. I'm merely reporting what I was told and admiting that my previous assumptions were incorrect.

I'm afraid I haven't got a clue what you're doing.

Martin

How could someone train for the mile on 40 mpw? That is 5-6 miles per day?

When I have read any account of his training it always struck me how little detail there was to it and how it seemed to leave out one session each day.

If he says he ran twice per day, then he did. If he ran very short sessions like 20 x 100m hills, and 4 x 800m then he would run a MINIMUM of 2 miles WU and CD. People, that is SIX miles. If he ran just 4-6 miles in the AM each day (or most days) then that would be 10-12 miles a day. AND THAT IS THE MINIMUM HE COULD HAVE DONE IN THE WINTER. 70-90 a week off very short sessions 10-14 times a week.

What I find the most amusing about this is how many people REFUSE to believe Seb Coe himself, even suggesting that he somehow can't remember his own training. I am betting he remembers quite a bit about the training that took him to 1:41, 2:12, 3:29 and 3:47.

I personally have no axe to grind about the whole thing and have always thought that the low-mileage thing was easy to swallow. After all, he is the only person in history to run that fast over 800m-2000m. Cram came very close. But Coe didn't have the marks at 3k or 5k that many of his competitors had and I always thought it was because he was also much better than them at 800m. I thought he was a genetic superfreak who didn't need heavy endurance work to cover 3.75 laps at 55.7 a lap. Turns out I was probably wrong.

But really who cares?

ok. We cannot except that a runner can perform extremely well at middle distances at lower mileages.

Or, rather, can you not accept that Coe in fact ran more than you believed?

Martin, an adovcate of more moderate volume, asks Seb himself and now you tell us that Seb doesn't know what he's talking about for "some unknown reason?"

He was either lying then, or he is lying now. Why do you assume he is telling the truth now? I don't get it. Either way, he has lied about his training. I actually like Seb Coe and was a huge fan of his back in his heyday, but it is disappointing to me to find out that he was either

lying back then or that he is lying now. Why doesn't that bother you?

Also, it is a pretty common occurence for the majority of runners, both world class and non world class, to exaggerate their mileage years later. Most people have this distant memory of their one 100 mile week and seem to remember that it was how they always trained. This would be a great case study: Ask 100 runners how many miles a week they averaged 20 years ago, and then go through their training logs and compare what they really did. I am guessing 80% or more will say they did more mileage than they did. It is human nature and it seems like Seb is doing the same thing.

When I get asked how do I stay so skinny, I tell people that I run 100 miles per week when in fact I eat nothing and walk around the block once a week.

I think we may be feeling the effects of Clinton's delicate splicing of English.

You can look at this from multiple viewpoints:

A 60mi Coe week is discounting all running that is non-training specific. IE -- it would include a 90min endurance run, but exclude warmups, cooldowns and easy morning 8k's.

Or you can look at the 60mi weeks as an annual average or as an in season, competition figure.

Or whatever you'd like to rationalize it.

darkness wrote:

How could someone train for the mile on 40 mpw? That is 5-6 miles per day?

I don't know, ask Jim Spivey (ok, he ran likely more like 40's and 50's most weeks, but it was still low. Ask him yourself.

[Or maybe wejo, trackhead, JK, Peter Snell, and the ghost of Lydiard all got to Spivey too and "convinced" him to changed his testimony on how many miles per week he used to run! :-) Relax, people, that last part is a joke. But I do like the vision of the high-powered high mileage mob threatening the low mileage guys to change their stories. Sort of like a gov't or a religioon deciding to cover up some inconvenient facts/truths that contradict their dogma/ideas because they figure they know what is best for the masses, and it is better to present a consistent message, and the message is: 100+ miles per week is the only way to go]

Oh, and by the way, some top runners take days off (GASP!) sometimes. Therefore if one was doing in the range of low 40's to high 40's for miles a week on 6 days a week, that would of course be 7-8 miles a day. (So your extra low example of 40 per week translating to 4-5 miles a day is shrinking the daily mileage down for effect I assume. Again, running "in the 40's" per week could mean an avg of up to 8 miles a day. Frankly, I don't consider that a paltry sum for an 800/1500 guy, if the quality is there, if they have natural speed, if they get a "long run" once a week (10+). And if one adds in lots of drills, weights, plyos, and a little cross-training (say some pool work or a little bike work), you will have an extremely well-conditioned athlete. That is how "someone could train for the mile on 40 mpw" (ok, IN the 40's, as in 40-49 mile per week.....)

Of course the myth was perpetuated by Coe. He was cagey and wanted to make everyone first of all think he was giften beyond belief and could get away with running half the mileage they were doing. Second, as a denuement of it all, it worked out so that others tried to emulate the training they thought he was doing, and they failed miserably in some cases. Look at how many people have bought into the idea one can run a world record 800m or mile on low mileage and, yet, season after season by doing so they fell short of rising through the ranks.

I have said it many times, when I listened to Peter Coe at the 1983 Kinney Midwest Regional meet answer questions about training he said, "I don't count any running slower than 6 minutes a mile as real training." So, 4 or 5 times a week his son runs 5 miles in the morning at 6:10-6:20 per mile and doesn't count as mileage for the week. Seb runs a 14-15 miler in the winter base phase but Peter only counts it as 10 miles because the first 5 miles were slower than 6 minutes per mile. Peter doesn't count the warm ups or extended cool downs that Seb does before and after speed sessions because they are slower than 6 minutes per mile. I remember Peter also saying that he prescribed 2 laps of 90 seconds a piece or better for immediate cool down after 200m reps (presumably to be at least at the 6:00 per mile pace so that it would count as "real training"). Seb probably ran more distance, but slower, after than that did not go in the logbook.

The man did train hard and trained plenty, year after year. He reached high levels through dedication, toughness, and talent, not just talent alone. He does deserved credit not for just talent.

Tinman wrote:

I have said it many times, when I listened to Peter Coe at the 1983 Kinney Midwest Regional meet answer questions about training he said, "I don't count any running slower than 6 minutes a mile as real training." So, 4 or 5 times a week his son runs 5 miles in the morning at 6:10-6:20 per mile and doesn't count as mileage for the week.

After reading all the posts, that pretty much solves the mystery (if there is any) about what Lord Seb was counting (or not) when reporting training mileage. And it makes sense.

Does it bother me that an Olympic level athlete may have not reported all of his training publicly where his competitors would have access to it? No. Track is a competition (not a sing along contest) and sometimes to win competitions we have to use everything available to us (within the rules) to win. Hell, I have even said I was doing less training than I actually was to my competitors to try and get an edge. I don't think of it as lying at any rate and you are still correct, there is more than one way to the top. It's just that the whole quality versus quantity argument got a whole bunch more one sided. Has there been successful low mileage runners? Yes and there always will be. But they have and always will be in the minority.

Low mileage can work wrote:

He was either lying then, or he is lying now. Why do you assume he is telling the truth now? I don't get it. Either way, he has lied about his training. I actually like Seb Coe and was a huge fan of his back in his heyday, but it is disappointing to me to find out that he was either

lying back then or that he is lying now. Why doesn't that bother you?