Why I Prescribe Marathons For Milers

My training system is not the superhuman thing it's made out to be. In fact, I don't know how this business about pushing back pain barriers or driving beyond points of collapse ever got started. My system is as simple as it is effective: build up your endurance through marathon running.

In theory, I am trying to develop my runners until they are in a tireless state. In practice, this means I am trying to give them sufficient stamina to maintain their natural speed over whatever distance they are running. Stamina is the key to the whole thing, because you can take speed for granted. No? Look here. Everybody thinks a four-minute mile is terrific, but it is only four one-minute quarter miles. Practically any athlete can run one one-minute quarter, but few have the stamina to run four of them in a row. How do you give them the necessary stamina? By making them run and run and run some more, until they don't even think in terms of miles. There is no psychological magic and no pain barrier involved. It is merely a process of gradual conditioning.

My method is designed solely for middle-distance and distance runners, not for sprinters, and the results indicate that it is the best method around. My athletes have dominated middle-distance running in New Zealand for years. Twelve of them have represented New Zealand in international competition. Two of them, Murray Halberg and Peter Snell, are Olympic champions. Halberg also holds the world two- and three-mile records and Snell, as you know, broke four world records—mile, half mile, 800 meters and 1,000 yards—in three weeks. That's pretty fair cracking, and Peter will tell you gladly that marathon training is responsible.

Despite the success of marathon training, most of the world's coaches do not use it. They rely solely on repetition or interval training. That is, they make their runners do a fast quarter, then a slow quarter, or a series of sprints, over and over. They do their work on a running track, trying to build up speed. But this type of work does little to build up stamina, which is far more important. We run on the roads, over the hills for 20 or 30 miles. After this, a mile or two-mile race is a lark; it is no problem at all. So what happens? Coming down the stretch, a man like Snell can sprint. He can turn on all his speed. A man like, say, George Kerr, who is much faster, cannot do it. He doesn't have the stamina to use his speed when he needs it most.

The time to shine

There is another problem in repetition training. Athletes trained under it do not know when they will hit their peak. Take England's Gordon Pirie, for example. A top distance runner. But when the big meets—like the European championships or the Olympics—came up he could only hope to be ready for them. The way he trained, he could never be sure. If there is an art to this business, this is it: to be in peak form on the big day. We let the mugs have the unimportant races. We point for the big ones.

Zatopek is a good example of the failure of sole reliance on repetition training. As a national coach, he can tap the whole potential of Czechoslovakia. But where were his men at the Rome Olympics? They didn't win a thing. Yet most coaches still will not believe my system is the right one. One result is that a good many fine prospects have been ruined by excessive speed work and by trying for quick results. That is a shame, but the coaches' stubbornness doesn't bother me. I couldn't care less what they think. I'll let the results speak for themselves.

All my runners, even the half-milers, are basically marathon men. Just before Christmas last year Snell and Halberg entered a regular marathon race. Halberg finished second. Snell took it pretty easy but turned in a good time. Within eight weeks of that race he ran the mile that broke the world record. That is what marathon training can do for you.

When a chap comes to me and says he wants to run, I tell him to put on his shoes and move out for five or 10 minutes, then turn around and come back. I can tell right away what kind of shape he is in. If he is a novice, I increase his running time gradually, not each day, but as he gets stronger, until he can go an hour out and an hour back. If he is experienced, I start him higher and move him along faster. But the principle is the same—develop physical endurance for the grind that lies ahead. Then we go up into the hills and run on the roads. We spring up one side of the hill and stride out down the other, and the miles roll by. At their peak the boys do 100 miles a week and they run every day of the year. I used to run with them all the time, but I am an administrator now and let boys like Halberg and Snell and Barry Magee act as my subcoaches.

Rain, hail and horse tracks