G. ASSESSING AMERICA'S DISTANCE RUNNERS

H. TRAINING DISTANCE RUNNERS FOR INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

Prefontaine ran 13:22 which would place him fifth on the list. Since he ran on an all-weather track there is no reduction in time.

ASSESSING AMERICA'S DISTANCE RUNNERS

How does one assess the greatness of America’s distance runners? Each generation has pushed beyond the one before with better training, better tracks and better equipment. So how do we place these people in order of greatness?

I suppose we must first look to see how they fared at the world level. Did they win any major competitions. Did they set any American and World records. If we are going to compare these people we must have some way to measure the environment of when they ran. Maybe that is impossible but we know that the modern all-weather tracks are much faster than the old cinder tracks. How much faster? Hard to say, but obviously the difference must be close to two seconds per lap. Why is this so? First there was little rebound from the cinder tracks, in effect you had to work much harder to achieve the same stride length. Stride length is important as the stronger push off you have off the back foot the more time you will spend in the air with both feet off the ground and therefore your stride length will be longer without any additional effort.

If we would theoretically give four inches less per stride and the length for a stride is seven feet, then we must take approximately sixty two (62) strides per lap. In a five thousand meter race that means you would take 775 strides times the four (4) inches (lost) and you would have a difference of 258 feet or 86 yards. That 86 yards is worth 13 to 14 seconds. That alone is a major difference.

Secondly, we must account for the condition of the track. Obviously an all-weather track is always the same, stride after stride. The runner does not have to worry about stepping in a hole. On the cinder track the runners, with each push off, create a small hole that causes the runners foot to shift each time he hits a hole. This happens almost constantly as the meet is in its latter stages or in a long race where many runners are tearing up the same lane. This means that each athlete is constantly fighting to use his energy to stay in a straight line as he is being thrown from side to side as his foot lands. In other words the athletes energy is not all going forward but some is used to keep the body from shifting. Runners on all-weather tracks do not have this problem. The difference is easily one second per lap and possibly more. For those of us who ran on both type of tracks the difference was tremendous. That would mean the cinder tracks are 12 to 25 seconds slower, due to this factor, than the all-weather tracks.

Those two differences would mean the cinder tracks were 25 to 38 seconds slower in a 5K race than if that same race was run on an all-weather track

Another consideration and a major one is if the athlete won the race. If they did not, then we would have to assume they were running as fast as they could at the time. Obviously if the race was tactical and he lost, then we could not compare. On the other hand if the athlete won the race we might assume he could run faster. One way to ascertain this would be to look at his finishing lap. If the last lap was exceptionally fast it would show that the athlete was not in any stress going into that lap.

We must also take into account the competition. Obviously every athlete runs faster when the competition in the race is excellent. Fast times normally come from fast competitors. There are cases when an athlete does a great time on his own but it is rare. If rabbits are used it is even better than having great competitors in the race. The athlete does not have to worry about tempo and all they have to do is concentrate on the job at hand.

Is this logical? It would be interesting to do a scientific study so we know for sure.

In 1996, when I was in Atlanta for the Olympic Games I was invited to speak to the employees and guests of Nations Bank. Afterward as I mingled with the guests a gentleman joined the group and was introduced as Mr. McCall. After five minutes one of the other people in the party mentioned that Mr. McCall was the CEO of Nations Bank. This was the perfect opportunity to relate my ideas on how the United States could bring distance running back to where it had been in the 60's. When the perfect time came I spoke to Mr. McCall concerning my ideas and he seemed very interested and asked me to write him a proposal. When I returned home I did just that and I will place those ideas here for you to read with updates. I also contacted Craig Masback and informed him of the conversation and gave him Mr. McCalls name and address so he could follow up and use his good office to help bring my ideas to fruition.

    The United States has fallen to a second rate power in distance running from the 1500 meters to the 10,000 meters. During these last several years we have not had many runners ranked in the top ten in the world in any of the distance events. In this Olympic year of 2000 we still have athletes who have not qualified for the Olympic standards and now we have only one representative in the men's and women's marathon.

    This should never happen to the United States with our population, standard of living and technology. However something is lacking or we wouldn't have this situation. It is easy to point fingers but at the same time, we must have an honest discussion if we are going to remedy the situation. So what are the possible reasons? Do the distance runners of this nation lack determination? Are they willing to pay the price to keep up with the world? I can't answer that since I don't know what they are doing in their training. Some are very dedicated I am sure and would be very upset if they were told they don't have enough dedication.

    Are we keeping up with the training. Since I have been training athletes for some thirty five years I know you have to continually experiment and therefore my training methods are better now then when I ran in the Olympics in 1964. I have always believed to be a proper coach you must watch your athletes in the workout and adjust the workout to how the athlete feels and is performing on that day. I hear constantly from athletes that their workouts are posted on bulletin boards and they are expected to do the workout. That is not coaching in my opinion. 

    And that is the third reason, do we have coaches who understand what it takes and have they trained at the levels they are asking their athletes to do. That is not to say they had to be international runners but I believe it would be helpful since they would more fully understand the psychological aspects of International competition.  If you haven't been there how can you give advice.

    Whatever the reason, we must find an answer. If I can go back to the Los Angeles Track Club which was and still is the best Club Team ever in the History of the United States, that would be the model for future clubs in the United States. I am not talking about a "paper" club where athletes come together to represent a club but never train together. The Los Angeles Track Club trained under Mihaly Igloi, the great Hungarian coach and only those athletes who were training with him were allowed to carry the colors of the club into competition. They trained thirteen times a week. Twice a day Monday through Saturday and once on Sunday. And I will tell you it was very seldom an athlete missed a workout.

    Can this be done again? Of course it can and in the last few months the USAT&F has brought into being two clubs. One of those will be in Pocatello, Idaho and the other in Seattle, Washington. I don't know who will coach those clubs so I cannot give an opinion on how successful they will be.

    However it is a start and the USAT&F should continue to back clubs throughout the United States. In different locations corporations must be persuaded to back these clubs. They must be convinced that backing such a club would be good for their bottom line. What better way to advertise their product than to have their name in road races throughout the United States and on tracks throughout the world. Obviously these athletes would be out front and would receive publicity in many magazines. Sponsors would not have to be shoe companies but any company in the city where the Club will train.

    The important point is we need many different systems to train these athletes. All coaches feel their system is the best, otherwise they wouldn't use it. But all athletes will not prosper under the same system. Personalities differ and the psychology of training must suit each athlete.

    The important item is to pick the athletes for each Club and the training system which is to be used. Each club coach should interview a number of athletes to see if they would fit into his system. I would want to use some psychological tests and interviews with a psychologist before I chose the people to train.

    Even though all the athletes in my era worked full time and still trained twice a day I believe it would be best to have the athletes work  part time, probably four hours, five days a week. That would be a necessity since too much down time would not be best psychologically. I don't believe it would be a problem to convince various companies to hire these people on a part time basis.

    So what is the next step. The USAT&F people must be the catalyst. They must be the ones to see to it that press releases are given to all media. They should have meetings with every coach who is qualified and wishes to have a Club team. They would help in contacting athletes so they are aware of the opportunities. Each coach could do it on their own but that is not the way it should be done.     

August 20,2000

Why do people compete? Can you think of anything more destructive psychologically. The worry, upset stomach, sleepless nights. Of course there are all levels of competition and I would assume from observing the human race over these sixty plus years that not everyone likes to compete at very high levels. In fact my best guess is that only a small minority love the high level of competition.

Now I am talking about competition that can keep you awake at night wondering if you have done the right things to be at your best. It doesn’t have to be in the world of sports but exists in business, religion, the arts etc. The level of competition where you put everything on the line, do or die as they say.

But I have been in the world of business and the only time I felt the same as when I was competing in sport was when my livelihood was at stake. In other words something must be at stake or at least you feel something is at stake. In sports it may be as simple as your reputation.

When I was in high school at the State competition I was as nervous or maybe more so than when I stepped to the line for an important international race. Why? I had nothing to lose except my self imposed reputation. I wasn’t expected to win by anyone, even myself. But there was something, some idea in my mind, that I must run well, for if I didn’t I would bring shame upon myself. Is that what it was? A mentally contrived idea of my own making.

Humans, because we are thinking animals, have a way of making too much of an ordeal. We worry about what might be and not what is. Many times we make things worse than they are.

Of course I can think of some scenarios that are so bad our own minds cannot comprehend what is going to happen to us. When something goes wrong with our bodies, something that is life threatening, we have a hard time comprehending. We worry about the situation. We don’t have to contrive anything. What is real is real enough, there is no reason to go beyond reality.

Having said all that let me go to the part of competition I know the best. Man against man, head to head, with something at stake. As I look back I was more nervous when I was not as well prepared as I wanted to be. But what does that mean? How did I know that I wasn’t prepared? I surely didn’t know what my competitors were doing in their training. I thought I was doing everything possible in my training in high school. Of course as I look back I think how funny that statement is. If I was doing fifteen miles a week it would have been good.

When I was in High School I remember lining up for the State Mile race and being so nervous I walked off the track and threw-up. I did it in college too and as I look back I realize I wasn’t handling the situation but I was allowing the situation to handle me.

Later I made a discovery, a mental awakening if you will. I decided I would only run as well as the shape I was in. Oh I knew I could factor in the excitement of the race but that would always be there. The one thing I could control was the work I could and would do in the weeks, months and years prior to the race. Therefore if I was prepared properly I could and would run well. Being prepared properly meant that I was doing more and better work than my competitors.

How did I know I was in better condition? How did I know I was doing more work? I didn’t, that’s right I didn’t. So how do you assess your condition against those who want to run you into the ground. You step to the same starting line and test your body against theirs. Your Physical conditioning and your mental conditioning is put to the test. If you lose you spend some time re-evaluating your training. Where can I change the training so I can become a better athlete? Do I spend more time running, run more miles, run faster in my workouts, eat better, sleep better. You look at your entire life and learn to treat your body as a machine. How do you make this machine more perfect? Check everything, even the way you breathe.

As your races improve your mental state improves. There is no doubt that success begets success. When you finally believe totally in yourself, when everything has come together, when workouts that once were difficult have become easy and hard days of the past are no longer hard and you have moved to a higher plateau, then you are ready to test your rivals. Now you can compete.

That is the reason records continue to go down. Athletes continually test themselves against their rivals. When they lose they realize they must train a little harder and a little smarter. They do that and beat their rivals and then someone else goes to a different level. It is a constant reaching for better training.

Isn’t it interesting that someone fifty years ago didn’t train like athletes of today who are setting world records. Why didn’t they take a quantum leap. Why didn’t they say to themselves, my training is ridiculous, I am going to increase the load four fold. They didn’t and therefore records continued to fall slowly. Of course we must remember running tracks and shoes have also helped to bring records down and we must put those items in proper perspective. (Take two seconds per lap from cinder track records over all-weather tracks.)

Getting back to the competitive side of racing, runners come to the race with different intensities. If we could measure the physical fitness of everyone in a race we would find several runners with near equal cardiovascular fitness. However one of these athletes would be able to beat the others most of the time. Why? Because that person is able to concentrate on the race better than his rivals. And in many cases the athlete is able to push through discomfort better than the others.

That is a part of the race we never know. How do you measure how much discomfort the athlete is able to withstand. Many athletes will back off when they feel their bodies in that discomfort zone. Some are able to set the discomfort aside and continue pushing the body. That is not to say they don’t feel the pain, it is to say they have learned to deal with it.

Is it possible to train the athlete to accept more pain or is it a personality trait. It may be both. I have come across athletes who seem to have the natural ability to push their bodies to extremes. But at the same time I believe I have been able to train all my athletes to push harder in races. Learn to live with the pain. There have been times when I was so tired in races, trying to stay close to the leaders, I had fleeting thoughts that soon I would have to drop off the pace. But I was able to say, it will only hurt for a short time, two, three, four minutes is such a short time, don’t slow down, don’t back off.

There is no doubt there are runners who do not win, who run harder, enduring more discomfort, than the people who beat them. They are tougher psychologically, but have not placed their bodies into the same cardiovascular condition as those who beat them. Oh, I realize that on certain days there are other factors, but if we could rid ourselves of those factors the above would be true. Then, of course, we must remember genetics.

My point is then, that it is not enough to have the body in great cardiovascular condition. A top athlete must be able to concentrate totally on the task and have the ability to run through discomfort. It is the mental side of racing. Yes, some athletes are born with superior attributes (genes) and they will be able to get to the top if they are able to put the other two factors together.

The tough competitor is one who can push through discomfort. A person who has the ability to put up with more pain than their competitors. All other factors being equal it is this person who will win the race.