Cliff's Training

The latest training diary to be looked at is Cliff Brown's. Cliff ran for Vale of Leven AAC and then Milburn before joining Clydesdale and was a good class club runner. With pb's of 2:42:04 (marathon), 1:16:02 (half Marathon), 34:34 (10K), 16:32 (5K) and 9:58 (3000 indoors) he would be more than welcome n the club right now or indeed at any point in my time in the club.

So how did he train? What was a typical week for him? Well he never took a day off for a start! If we have a wee look at April 1985 we get.
Monday: 7 Miles Easy in 49 minutes
Tuesday: 13 miles club fartlek in 1:32
Wednesday:22 miles Long Slow Distance in 2:45
Thursday:5 Miles Easy in 36 Minutes
Friday: 6.5 miles in 42 minutes
Saturday: 14 miles including the Tom Scott 10 in 58 minutes
Sunday: 3 Miles Easy - disappointed with the Tom Scott but put in too many miles in the week up to then.

By 1989 he had stopped doing marathons and tried shorter stuff with a week like this in April 1989.
Monday: 7 Miles including 6 x 400 with 400 recovery jog
Tuesday: 5 Miles Easy in 34 minutes
Wednesday: 5 Miles Easy in 33 minutes
Thursday: 9 Miles club fartlek in 56:00
Friday: 6 Miles in 40:00
Satuday: 4 Miles Time Trial in 23:50
Sunday: 12.5 miles in 1:23.

I'll go into other training when I do a wee review of the Diaries in a day or two but note for now:
1. Sevn Days a Week Training;
2. Variety of training - even though there was no track other than Postie's or occasionally Kelvin Hall he got the reps done for the fast sessions; he also did steady runs, fartlek runs, grass, road and country were all used. It wasn't just steady on tar!
3. he was prepared to alter what he was doing almost completely to do some faster running when he was already quite successful at the longer distances.