Levins was training with Mo Farah for a while. I'm not too sure why they still don't train together. Levins said he thought he was training hard but when he started training with Farah it was a reality check in terms of intensity.
https://spikes.iaaf.org/post/cam-levins-talks-about-training-with-mo-farah
Though his fellow athletes welcomed him warmly, when it came to training things were much less sympathetic. He remembers the first time he went on an “easy run” with Farah and Galen Rupp (who took 10,000m silver in London 2012).
“The last couple of miles were run in 5:15 or 5:20 and that was an easy run,” Levins recalls. “I would never have thought to have even approach that pace for my easy runs.”
great find!
bleh:
At SUU, his coach Erick Houle got him on a schedule that involved running up to three times a day and as many as 170 miles a week.
the next quote is:
Gruelling, but it paid off. In his final year at Southern Utah he secured the NCAA 5,000m and 10,000m double and made the Olympic team for Canada.
his college coach got him addicted to the "crazy high mileage". Not sure how many miles per week Cam ran previously, but I seriously doubt it was 120+.
i'd love to know if they tried 2x/day first, with less total mileage, and gauged whether or not that was working, then moved to 3x/day / 170-190.
Salazar seems like a much better coach, just from this paragraph:
Nutritionally, Levins also underwent a transformation. Out went the cookies, sweets and pizza; in came the granola and skimmed milk. He has also introduced daytime naps to prepare for the second session of the day.
The stuff about easy runs being low 5's is pretty crazy though. I've heard they are all over the place with that stuff.
Cam seemed to respond well to the lower overall volume, and higher quality work. I think he eventually got hurt working with Salazar/Oregon Project, and went back to his old college coach, and got hurt worse & slower.
From what I see, Cam is one of those guys who will do anything you tell him to do, and do it exactly the way you want. Incredible potential but, also extremely coachable.
I just really think his college coach set himself up for an unmaintainable mindset.. The way he trained, may work for a month, or a few months, but to engrain such a mindset for long term training, seems like a problem.
Achieving more with less should always be a primary focus .. why over work? It's like an algorithm, the best ones are efficient, achieve the result without doing any excess costly work. Finding that balance is important. The extremely high mileage coaches/athletes seem like they abandon that, and try to ride that for as long as possible but the mindset may never disappear ... "man i'm not working enough!! (at 130 miles a week, because it's not 170)" etc.
dno, 2cents.
