Notes from Endurance Seminar at the World Half

I've got a ton of notes from the various seminars and presentations this weekend around the World Half Marathon in Birmingham. Over the next few days I will try and write up as much as I can.

The expert panel on Friday night comprised (left to right in photo) Wilson Kipketer (800m World Record holder), Alberto Salazar (Head Coach of the Oregon Project, 3x NY Marathon winner), George Gandy (Head Coach at Lougborough University), Lisa Dobriskey (World Silver 1500m) and on the other side of the room out of camera shot were Liz McColgan (1991 World 10,000m Champion), Glenn Latimer and Ian Stewart (now Head of Endurance at UK Athletics). Its fair to say that most of the time was spent with the folks in camera shot ...

The first big topic was about how to revive distance running in the UK (and Europe) so Alberto gave us some insights into the American experience. After the high point of the 1980s in the US standards dropped alarmingly in the 1990s. One of the measures he used was the number of high School runners clocking sub 9minutes for 2 Miles. For many years there would typically be 30 or so but by the low point it was down to just a handful each season. And given that producing successful endurance athletes is a numbers game then having a small pool of talent coming into the college system was going to have an impact further up the pyramid. This was a theme that both George and Wilson agreed with. You had to have a large number of young athletes coming through to give you a chance to produce the Dathan Rizenheins and Galen Rupps. Encouragingly the number of sub 9s is now back to close to an all time high - although we didn't get to hear what had made running sexy again for amercian school kids.

The Oregon Project was kicked off a decade ago as one initiative to try and revive fortunes. Alberto's first experience at raising standards turned out to be a chastening one. His plan was take a bunch of mid-13 minute 5k runners, speed them up a bit and then move them up to the marathon. By recruiting guys who had competed well and had good track speed he reckoned his chances of success were high. As it turned out he only managed to get one guy into the 2.10-2.11 range and the insights were revealing. Alberto's assumptions were based on the fact that during the 1980s he trained with a bunch of guys in Boston at the GBTC who were running sub 2.09-2.12 marathons with far less speed than the guys he was planning on moving up in Oregon. Where the plan fell apart was that the 2000's generation had been running far less volume than their eighties counterparts and while this wasn't a problem at 5k when they moved up it caught them out big time. When pushed for some numbers he reckoned that the GBTC guys were probably doing 120mpw + while the Oregon guys came from a background of 90mpw plus or minus. Thats a big difference over several years training and the cumulative effect on aerobic development is huge.

He developed this idea further with a story about how kenyan kids at age 18 have 15,000 more miles in the bank than the average american high school athlete. While the numbers mights have been rough and ready the point certainly hit home. We need to run more and sooner. And expect that our athletes will peak at a later age than their east african counterparts because they will be behind in their development.

George had an interesting take on why athletes weren't running enough. Back in the 1970s and 80s there were fewer major international events. So although athletes raced a lot in low key events they really only had to peak once a year so spent the whole winter and spring just running and racing tired. These days you have the Euro Cross, Indoors, World Cross and then a summer track season where you need to make some money and try and perform in a major championship against fierce competition. So athletes are spending a lot more time preparing for races instead of just getting aerobically fit. This is a reality of a fully professional sport which we don't seem to have come to terms with.

So some big lessons for Alberto from that first experience which could be summarised as: if we have fewer runners available we need to train them smarter (and the Oregon/Nike version of that will be developed in a subsequent post); identify the talent at a younger age and start to build its aerobic capacity with progressive volume (more on this later as well with some examples).

The other panellists were in agreement on one big theme which was the need to train in groups. Lisa talked about doing some of her runs with up to 60 athletes at Loughborough under George's guidance and how that helped her to improve. Ian Stewart revealed that UK Athletics was setting up two altitude bases, one in Font Romeu and one in Kenya as well as using Loughborough as the permanent centre for endurance in the UK. A change from the previous regime was that he was keen to encourage non-funded athletes to also use these venues to start to re-create the large group concept of yesteryear.

And its not just the US and UK thinking along these lines. Outside the conference I bumped into Michel Boeting who used to work with Jos Hermans at Global Sports Communications and gave me my marathon debut opportunity in Amsterdam in 2003. One of Michel's recent projects has been to set up a privately organised group in the Netherlands with Dutch and a few Belgian runners. At present they have about 30 athletes including the likes of Michel Butters and results seem to be picking up already though funding is still proving hard work - this seems to be a difference between Europe and the more entrepreneurially minded US where a number of groups have sprung up outside 'the system'.

In the next few days look out for: Managing the volume progression, Altitude and Marathon Preparation.

Part 2 - Progression here

Funny thing endurance (2)

Watching the swimming world championships at the weekend I was struck by Jo Jackon's comment when interviewed by Sharron Davies about her Silver medal in the 800m freestyle. Reflecting on the race and her future ambitions she said that the 800m was good for her 400m and 200m. Here was an athlete who really gets the value of overdistance racing and the impact of endurance on her shorter events.

It got me thinking about a few other things I had seen during the summer where endurance had been the difference between first and second. Remember back to that epic Men's Singles final at Wimbeldon ? Federer v Roddick. Its 2 sets all, deep into the 5th and Roddick is yet to drop his serve in the whole match. Federer has been broken a couple times in earlier sets and has relied on great tie-breakers to keep in the match. Your money has to be on Roddick to break at some point.

So what does Federer do ? He keeps cool, keeps the ball in play and keeps making his opponent run around a lot. There has been talk in the run to Wimbledon about how Roddick's new coach Larry Stefanki ordered him to drop some kilos earlier in the season in a bid to improve his condition. And Roddick keeps on running. Then somewhere about 12-12 in the fifth Roddick visibly starts to tire. And this is a great view of what happens when fatigue kicks in. You can see that his skill level drops - he is unable to repeat the muscle movements required in the same way as before. Whether its hitting a tennis ball or running this is what endurance gives you - the ability to keep on repeating the same muscle movements time after time with the same quality. And eventually this fatigue in Roddick tells as Federer breaks for a 16-14 win (how brutal is that ? Imagine if in Sydney 2000 when Haile and Tergat were neck and neck after 25 laps of the 10,000m the rules said "sorry boys but there needs to be a 5 second margin between first and second, do another lap .."). So at the end of it the guy with the best endurance won.

The other example that sprung to mind was the UK Athletics trials and in particular the women's 800m. To simulatre Berlin (sort of) the women had to run 3 rounds in 3 days. Going into the championships the fastest athletes were Maz Okoro and Jennie Meadows. Both runners who started life as 400m specialists and have made big efforts to build an endurance base over recent years. The dark horse was the fast improving Jemma Simpson who has a 1500m background and now trains in Oregon with wily British coach Mark Rowland.

The rounds were fairly uneventful with the 3 class athletes qualifying comfortably. Come the final and the anticipation of an epic duel was high. And it never materialised. Simpson hit the front and pulled away effortlessly in the closing stages with Maz and Jennie trailing. For Jemma a 3rd race in 3 days was no problems with her endurance but for the the 400m types it was a probably a race too far. It takes me back to the Coe/Ovett/Cram/Elliott days when the 1500m runners did particularly well in championship 800m races where there were many rounds. And of course who can forget Peter Snell, the 'slowest' man in the Rome 800m final based on 400m speed but with an awesome endurance base from his winter miles. (And incidently another 1500m specialists Hannah England went sub 2.00 for the first time this season at the European Team Championships).

So love it or loathe it you just can't get away from endurance whether you are middle swimmer, tennis player or 800m runner.

London and East Regions Endurance Day

On sunday the London and East Regions of England Athletics joined forces to put on an Endurance Day at the Lee Valley Athletics Centre. In anticipation of needing a relaxing day after the previous day's southern cross country championships I had been lined up to join Paul Evans and Eamon Martin for a lunchtime Q&A. While Eammon was unfortunately unable to attend Paul was able to share some of his experiences with the audience of over 80 and I chipped in with some of my experiences from a slightly different perspective. Last year Paul was our Team Manager at Toronto and still most of the stories were new ! A few things struck me about what he said.

When he started running in the late 80s his coach John Bicourt told Paul that it takes 10 years to make a runner. The abbreviated version of Paul's answer was that we dont have that long. So John put him on 3 times a day training to take some short cuts and get things moving. Apart from the inevitable injury that followed it was a good reminder that endurance is a long process of accumulation. My rough and ready reckoner is 30,000 - 50,000 miles to get near your potential. So John's 10 years is about right assuming an everage of 80 miles per week. I wonder how many runners take this sort of perspective and have a plan to get the work done over the course of a running career ?

Paul also talked about his breakthrough at the Great Race in 1990. A Tour de France style stage race where after holding back in the first week he was able to win a stage at the end of it and realise that actually he could compete with the top guys he was racing against. This moment of truth acted as a really powerful motivator for him and shortly after he was able to go full time as a runner knowing that he could be successful.

This point about not really knowing your potential until it hits you between the eyes is something I see time and again in my work as well as in sport. For me the time I spent in the Rift Valley in 2003 really opened my eyes to the level that I was truly capable of training at, rather than the level which my inner voice/other people told me I could manage. One of the most difficult things can be having the courage to put yourself into a situation where you have to raise your game to survive. The rewards are well worth the risks though !

We also talked about how 10,000m running and the marathon relate to each other. While we didn't have time to get into the technical details of training (something for next time ?) we both noted that we had run our 10,000m track personal bests after starting racing marathons. This is by no means unusual. Paula Radcliffe ran 10,000m and 5000m PBs after moving up and Richard Nerurkar ran his 10k best 8 weeks after his debut marathon. What we both agreed on was that when you have trained for and raced a marathon you are very fit - just tired. So a good rest, we both had 3 weeks followed by a sensible return to training allows you to use that strong aerobic base to build some faster training on top. This idea of training for and racing shorter distances, on a range of surfaces, between marathons enabled us to keep our speed intact and make marathon pace feel comfortable (a lesson I forgot in the run up to Geneva).

Photos by Andrew Dunn photography