You may recall sometime last winter I posted about Peter Callahan. Actually put up a picture of “Burn with Vern” that he and his teammates had drawn on the whiteboard in their weight room. Peter just graduated from Northshore Country Day School in Winnetka, Illinois and will attend Princeton University next year. That is an accomplishment in itself. The real story is that Peter is now the numb
Peter Callahan Update
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This guy is the real deal. I anchored against him in the 4×8 and he took their team from 11th to 7th in his leg only(Passing me in the process.) Never thought he would drop 11 seconds though!
I imagine he could drop another 2-3 on his 800 if he had more competition. He ran a 1:51 with the most unreal kick I have ever seen, it just shows how much he had left. Here is the video(He’s in third place until he kicks it):
https://www.flotrack.org/videos/track_race/play/183288-il-hs-state-800-a-callahan-15122-class-a-state-recordI agree completely with this total athletic development philosophy and am currently trying to incorporate it my base building for next season.
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Participant
The kid has talent. This does not mean you can become an elite miler without running some high mileage. If you look at the training schedules of almost every elite miler you will see most if not all incorperate high mileage including Coe. People who infer Coe trained on low mileage are incorrect,
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Participant
The kid has talent. This does not mean you can become an elite miler without running some high mileage. If you look at the training schedules of almost every elite miler you will see most if not all incorperate high mileage including Coe. People who infer Coe trained on low mileage are incorrect,
This statement about Coe is a falsehood, his training never exceeded 100 kilometers or 62 miles. Lagat never exceeds 70, El-G never exceeded 80, etc… The list is endless. America is full of volume freaks.
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Participant
In an interview he gave not long ago, Coe stated that he routinely got up to 100 miles a week usually running twice a day. This included 15 mile long runs. He did not do this every week but he logged many weeks at 100 miles. This was directly from Coe. I think I will take him at his word.
Another thing with Coe is that he never logged his warm up or cool down mileage this would easily add another 20 miles a week to the total.
I have not read much on the other runners you mentioned so I wont comment,
I will say that if you look at the great milers of today and throughout the last 30 years almost all have logged high mileage. Heck even most elite 800 runners are logging 60+ weekly during base phase.
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Participant
In an interview he gave not long ago, Coe stated that he routinely got up to 100 miles a week usually running twice a day. This included 15 mile long runs. He did not do this every week but he logged many weeks at 100 miles. This was directly from Coe. I think I will take him at his word.
Another thing with Coe is that he never logged his warm up or cool down mileage this would easily add another 20 miles a week to the total.
I have not read much on the other runners you mentioned so I wont comment,
I will say that if you look at the great milers of today and throughout the last 30 years almost all have logged high mileage. Heck even most elite 800 runners are logging 60+ weekly during base phase.
If you read Peter Coe’s books and interviews you’ll find Seb is confusing miles and kilometers in interviews. Seb did a lot of doubles, even Frank Horwill outlined some of Peter’s training for Seb on his website where the maximum number of miles Seb ran was around 55-60 just short of 100K and his longest efforts under 15K or about 10 miles. Europeans, Asians, Latin Americans, Canadians, Australians, and Africans don’t run mileage, everything is in kilometers. Please realize the rest of world works in the metric system aka System Internationale.
The best runners in the world worry less about volume and more about adaptations to training, which means the they try to run a certain amount of distance at certain paces. They monitor their recovery from workouts allowing to increase or decrease volume or intensity throughout the training cycle to keep them from over-training or possibly increasing rest durations between workouts or adding new ones if they feel fresh or cutting them out if they are not adapting.
The runner who pays attentions to tempo they are running and why they are running that tempo do far better than those who worry about volume. Any coach worth his salt, will pay attention to Callahan’s previous training and send him off massive long runs and will build his volume gradually.
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Participant
that’s a very impressive time for 30 miles a week. anyone else have any idea what a training week would look like for him? i just don’t get how one can get any aerobic endurance from 30 minutes or less of running a day.
It’s not just about aerobic endurance in the mile.
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Participant
Coe specified that it was miles not k’s. add to that the fact he did not count warm up and cool down and you are still at a high number that is just fact weather you like it or not.
You also seem to be confusing issues. I and I don’t think anyone ever said you just needed to run high mileage. obviously pace, aerobic, anaerobic, vo2 max, lactate threshold, and speed work all come into play during a training year. It is also undeniably true that most elite milers run between 70-100 miles a week during base phase training. Many will go higher.
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Participant
Coe specified that it was miles not k’s. add to that the fact he did not count warm up and cool down and you are still at a high number that is just fact weather you like it or not.
You also seem to be confusing issues. I and I don’t think anyone ever said you just needed to run high mileage. obviously pace, aerobic, anaerobic, vo2 max, lactate threshold, and speed work all come into play during a training year. It is also undeniably true that most elite milers run between 70-100 miles a week during base phase training. Many will go higher.
So Seb’s father, Peter Coe is liar and the information in his books are incorrect? Peter was always straight-forward on how he trained Seb. Intensity and Pace management are the hallmarks of all great distance running training programs the same as it goes for sprinting. Please read more about Peter Coe, I have never seen or heard Seb state 100 miles, nor has Frank Horwill spoken about such mileage from Seb. Lots Seb urban legends out there like 2:00 flat 800m repeats uphill.
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Participant
I have read all of Coes books, and I have read several interviews by him and his father. I guess we will just agree to disagree. Of course even if I agreed with you that coe never went over 60-70 miles a week in his training(which I don’t) when you add in the warmup mileage and cooldown mileage that still would take him close to 100miles.
Once again you state intensity and pace management are the hallmarks of all great distance running programs.Who is disagreeing with that. Noone. why keep repeating it. My disagreement with you and the author is the contention that you don’t need to do a reasonably high amount of mileage in the base period. You give me a few examples of people who ran good off of low mileage programs. I would have to do the research to know if you are accurate or not.
Never the less these would be the exception and not the rule. Ovett, Scott, Walker,many of the kenyans, all of Lydyrds people. all of Canovas. The list is endless. As I said even elite 800 runners will usually run 60+miles aweek (many go higher) during base training.
To look at a highschool kid that rubs 4:11 off of 30 miles aweek and then come to the conclusion that it is not important to put in a good base phase of high mileage is simply short sighted, and contradictory to what most great distance coaches believe.
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Member
Borza, Juantorena and Everett?
I haven’t researched overly much but I think I remember these guys were low-mileage compared to the likes of Snell and such.
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Participant
Borza, Juantorena and Everett?
I haven’t researched overly much but I think I remember these guys were low-mileage compared to the likes of Snell and such.
Aaron:
the misinformation out there in the American distance running community is absurd. I guess you were not supposed to run 2:00 in the 800m with less than 15 miles per week in volume. I’ve heard all the Lydiard disciples, often these coaches have numerous injuries and didn’t realize that Lydiard produced his most successful athletes in smaller countries with hilly coastlines, he didn’t have success in areas not fitting this descriptions.
Sprint400:
Kenyans don’t run 100 miles per week, they don’t do a whole lot of base training either. If you coached Callahan how long do you think it would take you to get him to 60mpw? It would take me 3+ more likely 4 years to reach that point as his coach. His fitness as it is right would likely have put him into the finals of regionals in either the 800 or 1500m and likely would have put him into contention to qualify for nationals at the NCAA DI level. Making him run 60 miles per week in the next year or two will likely break him.
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Participant
Really. You think he is ready to qualify for the D1 nationals in the 800 or 1500 right now? Really? Would you like to re think that for a second. You obviously have no clue as to the caliber of athlete running in the D1 finals.
I don’t coach the kid but with runners like him I would expect to maybe progress to 40 a week by the end of summer. Than I would monitor his training hopefully we could get him to 60 by his sophmore year. I know this progression will not likely break him or any other athlete of this caliber.
By the way I have seen logs and talked to many kenyan runners. 100 mile weeks are done by a great number of them.
As to Juantorena and Borza. Are you suggesting they ran off of less than 15 miles a week volume, because if you are you are incredibly misinformed.I have a basic outline of Juantorenas training right in front of me It looks like he averaged btwn 40-55 miles a week during base prep. Lots of tempo runs. the volume gradually decreased as the season went on. This is less than most other elite 800 men. Of coarse it would be disingenuous to not point out that A.J was not actually a distance runner. He was in fact a 400/800 runner So it would be natural for his base volume to be less than others,especially800/milers. I will get you some info on Bora, but I do know it is common for him to do 15 mile long runs during base phase.
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Participant
I found an interview with Vyachesku Makarovich Boras coach.
He states that in base prep they would get up to 450k’s a month roughly 280 miles.
So probably somewhere between 50 and 60 miles a week give or take. Y.B. liked to do long runs of 20k but sometimes he would even go as much as 30k. He is not considered a high volume runner, as he is also stricly an 800 specialist. Never the less his base training still far exceeds that of 30 miles a week. This interview was from 2001 I’m not sure how much if any his training has changed since 2001.
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Participant
Here is another low volume 800 runners training.
This is from Luiz De Olivera who coached Joaquin Cruz, arguably one of the top 3or 4 800 runners in history
Directly from De Olivera: Base phase Dec-March aprox 48-63 miles a week
Special prep April-june aprox 60 miles a week
Comp July- sep aprox 39 miles a week
So as you can see even low volume speed 800 runners log up to as much as 50-60 miles a week during base phase and sometimes even longer into the year. Now these are your speed low volume guys, would you like to see some of the very successfull high volume guys. And we are not even talking about the mile which requires far more base mileage to be elite.
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Member
Callahan’s NON 800: https://www.runnerspace.com/eprofile.php?do=videos&pg=1&event_id=153&video_id=14257&folder_id=1075&offset=4#video
Unofficial Splits:
600: 1:27.1
Final 200: 24.4A slow first 400 for this race didn’t bode too well for him, but that finishing kick is still ridiculous.
Wonder what he could do in a 400…
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Participant
Here is another low volume 800 runners training.
This is from Luiz De Olivera who coached Joaquin Cruz, arguably one of the top 3or 4 800 runners in history
Directly from De Olivera: Base phase Dec-March aprox 48-63 miles a week
Special prep April-june aprox 60 miles a week
Comp July- sep aprox 39 miles a week
So as you can see even low volume speed 800 runners log up to as much as 50-60 miles a week during base phase and sometimes even longer into the year. Now these are your speed low volume guys, would you like to see some of the very successfull high volume guys. And we are not even talking about the mile which requires far more base mileage to be elite.
Lets agree to disagree, I am sick of arguing about petty stuff. Whoever coaches Callahan would be wise up his volume, but in no way should it double in two years. You may not many runners of his caliber who have suffered at the hands of mileage freaks, but I know many who have. It should take 3 years and maybe 4 to get to 60 miles per week.
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Participant
One of the biggest things to take away from this discusion is that training needs to be individualized, thats why Peter was able to improve, his coach tailored the training to him.
I have become very upset with everytime this argument comes up the mentioning of what professional runners do…. high school runners are not professionals and should not be trained as such.
*Ironic note of the day, people always mention Juantoreana as an example of the more sprint oriented 800m when in fact he was a 1500m runner as a youth (>18). At the same time many 1500/800 runners participated in 4×400’s in high school. My point is at the younger levels the training needs to be more general and geared towards healthy athletic development.
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