Emerson said it. “Whoso would be a man (woman too, dude!) must be a noncomformist.”
Every so often, someone comes along who doesn’t think like everybody else. People like Einstein and Galileo in science, Picasso and Georgia O’Keefe in art, Virginia Woolf and Samuel Beckett in literature, Ghandi and Joan of Arc, John Lennon, Jackie Robinson, Janice Joplin, Martin Luther King, The Wright Brothers, Sojourner Truth, Nelson Mandella, Billy Jean King, Woody Allen, Maria Montessori, Fidel Castro, Jesus, etc. etc. If you did a Wikipedia search on any one of these individuals, you would see they were all revolutionaries.
In our little world of running, there are a few famous innovators in training methodology. Emil Zatopek is credited with inventing “fartlek” (also, for strength training, he walked 10 miles through the snow while carrying his wife on his back … but, somehow, that method didn’t stick – wonder why?!); marathon great, Buddy Edelen, experimented with holding his breath while running and Arthur Lydiard used his own body like a lab rat to discover that 200 miles per week is too much – even for the LSD (long, slow, distance) guru, himself. Sebastian Coe’s father/coach/scientist perfected circuit training for middle distance speed while Ma’s Army of world record-breaking runners drank turtle soup. My own historical muse, Mihaly Igloi, might claim interval training as his legacy (unfortunately, there are no written records of his specific work-outs; he was one of those geniuses who kept it all in his head) and Bill Bowerman’s Oregon system is well-known for its wisdom of hard/easy.
Each innovator must have come up against detractors and nay-sayers … “That’s crazy!” … but they stayed true to their vision (whether it worked or not). This past summer, I crossed paths with one such visionary. His name is Alex L’Hereaux and he is a damn talented runner. Track & Field afficionados might know of him as the guy who took over Alan Webb’s scholarship at Michigan. I know him as a maverick.
Here’s why: Alex is being coached by his father (because no one else will have him? Eccentricity is difficult to direct.) and they have devised a plan of training with a weight vest that will add 1 pound – in the form of heavy, metal bolts strapped on to a garment that Alex, himself, hand-sewed – every month or so until Alex gets to 10 pounds. He is to run every work-out, every recovery day, every race with this ever-increasing weight. The idea is that when the Canadian national championships roll around, L’Hereaux will fling his vest to the sidelines and run like the wind … light as a feather … strong as an ox … Superman!
I am sooooooooooooo curious to find out if this “crazy” idea will work. I told Alex he should keep a detailed journal to record all the data … and then blog about it! I have the utmost respect for his (and his father’s) original thinking and I really do hope this guy makes it.
So would have Emerson:
“A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.”
This is tough as nails.
I think that I am going to try it too.
-JOCKO
I think I might just get a beer gut and then try to lose the weight real fast, is that the same? Although the jacket does seem like a good idea.
That might work if and only if he runs some runs without the weights otherwise he’ll be breaking the cardinal rule “run how you train, train how you run”! But hten what do I know?
[...] Remember the guy I wrote about who wore the weighted vest on all his runs? Well, by some cosmic turn of events (is a “twist of fate” ever really simple, Mr. Dylan?) Alex L’Hereaux has asked me to coach him. Over the years I have been approached by countless runners needing a coach. I have always said “no” because of time – and energy – constraints. Let’s face it, most elite (or even pretty good) runners are high-maintanence people. I have all I can handle maintaining the household and children, writing, running, coaching seejanerun and my group of Team Wednesday guys/John Hinton’s group. If anyone wants to jump in at the track with Hinton-dog, fine, but my taking on a runner who needs one-on-one time at the track or on the phone or over coffee is a thing of the past … at least I thought it was. [...]