Fellow Chips,
For those of you newer to the club and to workouts, let me also note that
I am willing to sit down with you and work on personal and individual training
schedules as well. This is a club setting to SERVE and SUPPORT each of you
in whatever goals you have in running. It is NOT just about coming to workout
and then…trying to figure out on your own what the “rest of the
process” should look like.
And FURTHER this IS A CLUB. It is meant to ASK YOU to support it via participation in club, regional and social events that it supports. Do YOU know that there is a “Gran Prix” series of races that the club can win $$$$ via it’s participation? We do NOT even have a chance at this IF we do NOT field whole “teams. ”Thus we NEED YOU, each of YOU, to show up at Gran Prix races. We need further to have you belong to the PA-USATF ($15/year) in order to be eligible to score on a club team. We LOST major scoring options at Humboldt and Clarksburg when potential CLUB scorers were not PA-USATF registered. PLEASE REGISTER with the PA-USATF as a CHIP (club #104) and schedule some of those regional races on YOUR calendar; they are FUN and well-done events!
We NEED YOU, EACH of YOU to wear your singlet. We need you to TRAVEL to some of the out of town races that are excellent events for everybody. We need YOU to be involved WITH the club’s activities.
History of Tuesday Night/Club Formal Coaching…
This is now the 20th+ year of the club’s formal training support, but it was started by George Parrott back in 1980 to be quite different than it IS now. Back then, supervised coaching was ONLY for …CHIP WOMEN! Tuesday and Thursday night workouts were originally only for females wanting to improve their racing outcomes, and the early group of FIVE women improved so obviously that soon guys started “sneaking” in, and in about 1982, I was forced to formally make the workouts coed. In those early days we had a qualification standard: you had to be able to run under 70 minutes for TEN MILES to come to Tuesday workout. Obviously TODAY that is not the case, and IF that standard still applied even Parrott could not attend today! By the late 1980’s we had evolved many levels and options to club training and participation at workouts approached 100-150 as the “marathon season” approached in late Summer.
Today we see a return to a strong representation of women, and to a broad range of running interests which enrich us all.
Parrott, your training director, thus started these workouts and watched the growth of the program and the club over these last 20+ years. He had been asked to start the program, because it was obvious that back in those early days, he had figured out HOW to get the MOST running performance out of his own meager potential. Thus my credentials: I have NOW run 128 marathons; I have run over 35 sub 3 hour times. I have run 6 sub 2:50 times with a PR of 2:41 on the old SF Marathon course. I have run 57:41 for ten miles, and 5 hours 57 minutes for 50 miles. I ran 6:12 for 50 miles at age 42. At age 52 I won the U. S. National Championship for 50-54 at 100km. I have run 17:09 for 5k and 35:24 for 10k, and I have TWO Silver and ONE bronze buckle from the WS 100. I have run 7:47 for the 55 miles at London to Brighton and 9:48 for the 56 miles at Comrades. I have run training mileage upwards to 6000 miles/year and strings of weeks of 180 miles/week for up to 10 weeks!
I wrote the chapter on ULTRA training for Hal Higdon’s recent book, and I was a columnist for a time for Runner’s World Online. I advise and coach runners all over the WORLD via the internet and the Dead Runner’s Society, where I am known as “Coach George. ”I have a research interest in sports psychology, since I am a PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY at CSUS, where I teach research methods and statistics, history of psychology and personality theories. I am HERE to help YOU.
What CAN YOU do to become a better runner?
I am convinced that we all compromise our training around our “real world” concerns. We are NOT full-time athletes, so we simply cannot do all that we might. We try to get as much out of what training we can follow.
In any compromise we lose certain options, and for most of us, we lose the option of “real endurance training and development. ”I came into running during the peak of the U. S. running boom, and it was neat to see so many people running and running so well. Most of the recreational runners in the late 70’s and early 80’s ran 70-90 MILES a week. It was something we just DID. Doug Rennie, one of the early charter CHIPS, and now the “city columnist” for Runner’s World was one of our top marathoners and he was a “low mileage guy” as was our Founder Abe Underwood, but THAT meant 60-75 miles a week and just NOT trying for 100 mile weeks. Doug ran EVERYTHING HARD. His philosophy was “less is more” at least if it is always hard. Will Stephens coached our local young girls club, the Will’s Spikettes, and he had 15-17 year old girls hitting 85-95 miles a week and that was MUCH quality too.
So, what are the lessons from the past, for TODAY American running…SUCKS. We simply do not have anything like the depth seen back in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Back then we had 5 guys in the Sacramento area under 2:15 in the marathon, and there were 5-6 guys in the Greater Boston Track Club at 2:12 or faster. And this was before heart rate monitors and the MYTH of altitude training.
What did those guys do? They RAN, they ran a lot, and they ran often…pretty darn hard.
1. We need to have as MUCH VOLUME in our training as we can find time for. Volume builds fundamental endurance. It would appear that mileage up to about 120-150 miles a week is optimal for a full-time athlete. Guys like Ron Hill and Derek Clayton who tried “a lot is good, so MORE must be better” well, they found a point of seriously decreasing returns out there in the 180+ miles/week territory. The Japanese and Chinese marathoners are regularly running 130 miles a week…or more, and our best recent U. S. marathoner left the U. S. to train with a stable of Japanese runners to find others motivated enough to challenge his needs. The Kenyans are running 3 times a day and mileage levels that clearly exceed 100 miles a week, and those are often “quality distance sessions too. ”Read “train hard, win easy” that describes what goes on in those Kenyan camps. Even world class MILERs do 80-120 miles a week in base training.
2. We need to do solid long tempo runs. For most of us, 3 miles is a good tempo effort, but as we get stronger and more fit doing up to 10 miles at near anaerobic pace is VERY GOOD training. I used to run Wednesday noon runs of 10 miles in 60 minutes +/-40 seconds…in training.
3. We need to do elemental speed training which is what Tuesdays and Thursdays is all about. On Tuesdays we/I try to get us strength emphasized speed with longer intensity units of 800m up to 2 MILES. On Thursdays we work on faster TURNOVER elements that later contribute TO the longer speed elements AND the tempo runs and the later racing.
It is basically a building we are constructing for YOU as an emerging runner/racer. The Foundation is from the LONG RUNS and the volume. It gives a good base to allow the visible structure to emerge. The longer strength-intensity work starts the form of the structure and the tempo runs extend and develop that form to a more stable and optimal outcome, and the shorter faster track type workouts SHARPEN the edges of the form/structure to make it (YOU the runner) the most defined and ready you can become.
So, the ORDER in developing your training is:
a. Volume first for foundation
b. Tuesday workouts NEXT to evolve the form
c. Tempo RUNS next to strengthen the emergent form, and
d. Finally track type sessions to sharpen the form and improve Tuesday development.
What is adequate volume? As much as you can afford and find time for is MY answer. IF you want to run anything from 5k to the half marathon you SHOULD be doing longer runs of 12-16 miles. Every world class miler I have studied did 12-20 mile runs in their base building phase every year! If you want to do the marathon…then longer runs of 20-35 miles will be most helpful. The New Zealand marathoners regularly did 30 milers twice a month or so, and there are MANY other case histories of how volume was built into marathon training. Brian Maxwell of POWERBAR fame (he owned the company) was a world class Canadian marathoner, he ran 0-3 miles on his “easy days,” and did 20-30 miles on his “hard days. ”Giolindo Bordin, who won Olympic gold and the Boston Marathon regularly did double workouts of 15km in the mornings and 20-30 km in the afternoons…all at 5:00 pace/mile.
Do NOT be afraid to experiment with as much mileage as you have time for. Do not try to “sharpen the building” before the base is stable, for this is how injuries evolve. One of the REAL REWARDS in this sport of endurance running is that it pays off “intelligence” over raw talent, for training “smart” will take you to levels you are not likely to have even imagined! Training impetuously will take you to the emergency room!
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