Every old-line marathoner laments that there is no longer the commitment to the long, hard training that was the hallmark of the 60s and ’70s and early ’80s. Marathoning, they will state, is one of the truly measurable things in life where you can see, on the stopwatch [Remember, these are gnarly old vets who used to race against the stopwatch before there were chronographs. ] the direct results of what you put into it.

There is no argument but that they are correct.

And the argument can be made that the deterioration of American marathoning came about when a large and influential group of scientists and coaches, starting in the mid-’80s, propagated the idea that “quantity” should be sacrificed for “quality.” They totally ignored the concept that “quantity” and “quality” could be combined and weren’t mutually exclusive. The old-line marathoners ran a lot of quantity to build a base, yes, but once they picked up their training they dialed in quality with the strong base of quantity. There is no way a high-quality marathon can be run on minimum mileage. The concept goes against the very definition of a marathon, that is, “an endurance contest.”

For America, Arthur Lydiard went into eclipse, and with him went America as a dominant force on the world marathon scene.

But it’s not all gloom and doom.

One of the uplifting sides to the barrage of letters and e-mails from today’s runners about the three-part marathon-training series is that most of them wanted more detailed, hard information about how to follow the programs correctly so that they could be more assured of reaching their goals.

Sure, there were some “Do I really have to do those back-to-back hard workouts?” questions. But for the most part, the curious runners very obviously had fall marathons scheduled for which they had very precise time goals set, and now they wanted to make the commitment to get the job done.

No, the programs aren’t easy. No realistic marathon-training program is easy—notifa time goal is involved. And in this age of give-everybody-agold-star-so-we-don’t-bruiseanybody’s-self-esteem, that realistic attitude of setting a goal and working hard to reach it goes against the grain.

Gee. That would be a novel approachtotraining. © —Rich Benyo

September/October 2002

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