While I can't concisely summarize what I've learned from my [not yet completed. should I abandon this entry ... ] history PhD one thing I've noticed is that my appreciation of running history is more historical and less anecdotal, more appreciation of past runners on their own terms. Zeke's quote of the day from Monday
if you know why that happened and you put your training plan together properly to reproduce that peak performance again on the day of the first race you want to win this season, then I would say you know something about training. Until you can do that, you don't know a damn thing about it. You are just a good athlete who, one day, without realizing why it is happening, will run a good race.
But first, some reflections on running history as history and not just splits from yesteryear.
Take, for example, the [too?] often told and written story of the pursuit of the four minute mile. What with the fiftieth anniversary of Bannister's 3:59:4 being celebrated just a couple of years ago, there's some recent entries in this genre. Neal Bascomb's The Perfect Mile is a good read, and the device of switching between Landy, Santee and Bannister helps a little in making it not seem inevitable that Bannister will succeed. It's like the movie Titanic. The ending is no surprise. It's difficult to convey suspense when your audience knows what will happen. John Bryant's 3:59.4 does an even better job of conveying uncertainty about the outcome by showing how people were convinced the Swedes would break the barrier during World War II. Moreover, Bryant sets the chase for the sub four minute mile in historical context; both backwards into the 19th century and forwards into the new committed, semi-professional approach to athletics that was exemplified more by Landy than it was by Bannister.
Reading about Landy's training and Zatopek's in Bryant's book reminds you that Arthur Lydiard was not nearly as much of an innovator as some would make him out to be. Lydiard's genius was systematizing ideas about volume and periodization and speed endurance, and then showing just how much control you could have over when you achieved your best performance (peaking).
Yet for all Lydiard's genius in person with his own athletes—and the following is hardly an original interpretation—applying and adapting what was written down in his 1962 book, Run to the Top was not straightforward. In later editions of Lydiard's work he himself mentions recommending to [1960s 10000m WR holder] Ron Clarke that Clarke do more steady state running, which Clarke did with gusto, but then failed to convert his dominant times into major championship wins.
Clarke was not alone in that era—the late 1960s and early 1970s—of failing to convert great times into major championship wins. His compatriot Derek Clayton, and the two Englishmen Bedford and Hill are often accused of the same "failure."
Here is my historical "analysis." You can imagine the quote signs with finger schtick here because analysis flatters what I'm saying.
It's not at all coincidental that these runners are of the same era. They overlapped in that post-1965 era when Lydiard's own athletes were no longer so dominant, and when Lydiard's ideas were just starting to make their impact in other countries. Lydiard had published his ideas, yes, but there's little doubt that Lydiard's comparative advantage was in hands on coaching. It's not hard to imagine how Lydiard's ideas mutated into overtraining in the hands (or feet) of people who were not directly coached by him. If you saw what Halberg had achieved with 100 miles a week, why not see where 200 will get you?
The other common element with these four runners was long periods of largely self-directed running. A coach could have held them back and helped them peak. But to get a reputation for disappointing in the big meets, you have to set up expectations you'll do well in the first place. World records (all but Hill) and second fastest times ever (Hill) set some pretty high expectations. And all four athletes did win major international events. They 'just' didn't win Olympic gold, which is ultimately the standard world record holders are held to. Moreover, their world records were long-standing. Some of the longevity of their records reflects that athletics was not as deeply competitive and professional as it is now.
In short, these four men were products of their time; very talented, very dedicated, and coming at an historical moment when the world records were assaulted by people whose training far surpassed what had been common only fifteen years earlier, and when that new form of training (high volume and sharply periodized) was not widely understood. Until there is new paradigm shift in running training we are not likely to see so many world record holders fall short in major championships as these men did.
Posted by robe0419 at April 7, 2006 10:34 AM