The Controversy

I was out of town for a few days attending a USATF Level I Certification Class in Albany, NY. The purpose of these classes is to establish a baseline understanding of all the events in High School and College Track and Field, and a grounding in training theory. It also serves to standardize the use of terminology to describe aspects of the sport in general and individual events in particular.

I had a lot of fun. The three-day class was interesting, the instructors were knowledgeable and enthusiastic, and it was great to meet some of the other coaches and athletes from around the region.

In 22 hours of classroom time, there was only one topic that created any controversy. Can you guess what it was?

No, it didn't involve performance-enhancing substances.

No, it was not a dispute about technique -- whether the spin was superior to the glide for shot putters, for example, or whether the hitch or the hang was better for long jumpers. Nor was there any disagreement about the inclusion of ALL the events in the class. Everyone in the audience was very attentive during the section on racewalking. No one argued that the pole vault should be banned from HS meets. We all enjoyed the videos of hammer throwers.

(By the way, and off-topic, did you know that in Maine, high school meets include a race-walking event? Did you know that some of the best junior race walkers in the country come from Maine?)

No, the biggest controversy had nothing to do with the rules, techniques, or inclusion of any single event. It had to do with the training of distance runners.

The four instructors were, without exception, "fast-twitch" people -- by which I mean that they were people who had enjoyed early success in events that require power and speed. Even the instructor for the throwing events had been a speedy football player.

The person who gave the presentation on training for endurance had been a 4:24 miler in H.S. and had gone to Villanova and run middle distance events for them. After college, he had coached Shenendowah High to a NY State Championship in cross-country.
He talked about training distance runners, and articulated the point of view that even endurance runners (even college 10K runners) should include training for speed every day (this might involve drills or strides, fartlek, or the familiar work on the track. But something for speed every day.

In the audience, there were a number of distance runners, including a coach for a team of professional distance runners with 10K PRs in the 28-29 minute range. He couldn't keep still, and countered with argument that one must train for endurance first, and then for speed. For the next 10-15 minutes, the conversation escalated. There were runners who KNEW that the focus should be on speed, and others who KNEW that the focus should be on stamina. There were those who advocated year-round training of the bio-mechanics required for running fast over, say, 400m, and others who advocated long periods of pure base-building. I think everyone there felt that speedwork (formal and informal) had a place in long-distance training, but there was radical disagreement about what that place should be.

Missing in the entire fracas was a discussion about individual differences in body composition and in the ability to respond to training. Individual runners respond so differently to low-intensity endurance work, that it seems any analysis of endurance training must take this into account.

Overall, it was striking that this controversy has abated little in the last century. In the 50's it was Zatopek running 60x400m five days in a row; in the 60's it was Lydiard having his athletes running 100-mile weeks for six months before sharpening, and since then, athletes have succeeded at the highest level following dramatically different training. Jim Ryun and Steve Scott ran tons of short intervals at mile pace. Peter Snell ran Lydiard's 100-mile weeks and won three Olympic Golds at 800m and 1500m. Seb Coe ran relatively low mileage, but every workout had a pace and a purpose, spanning the gamut of speed from 400m speed to 5K speed. Alan Webb, who last Friday became the third fastest American ever at 1500m, balances speed work with moderate distance runs.

Nobody knows a foolproof formula for training distance runners (plural). The best we seem to be able to do is figure out what works well for each individual.

Let the debate rage on.