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From: Tom Meakin.
Date: 12/18/2002
Time: 12:01:59 AM
Remote Name: 62.254.0.7
We are constantly hearing from the track winter reps brigade, how high winter mileage reduces your basic speed. Well lets take a few examples from history.
1. Rudolf Harbig~Spend up to 3 hours running in the forests on a sunday in the thirties. What could he do? 10.6 100m and world records at both 400m 46.0 and 800m 1.46.6. These performances would be worth say 44.7 and 1.44.2 on todays all weather tracks.
2. Peter Snell a regular 100 miles a week man capable of 1.44.3 on a converted speedway track. Coe would not have lived with his finish. Interestly he ran 22 miles steady on a Sunday and ran a world record for the mile on the following Saturday.
3.Juantorena who ran up to 15 miles a day in 2 sessions in the winter following the advice of Zabierzowski. He was capable of 20.2 for 200m!!
These examples could be back up with many more like Elliott etc. Obviously speed need to be maintained to some degree in the winter conditioning period. 1-2 fast leg speed sessions are more then enough for this purpose.
For British distance running to return to a higher level. Track work in the winter months must be ditched. This souless activity destroys the spirit of the athlete and often actually pulls the conditions of the athlete. Get out on the woods,parks,forest and mountains and let your spirit grow.