mile

Coe-style elite 800m, 1500m, and mile training from “Winning Running”

If you want to understand training for middle-distance running events—800m, 1500m, 1600m, mile—you need to understand Peter and Sebastian Coe’s approach.

In the English-speaking world, Coe-style training absolutely dominated discussions about training in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, mostly due to the fact that Sebastian Coe, under the guidance of his father Peter, was the king of the 800m, 1500m, and mile in the 1970s and 1980s.

The analogy to the Ingebrigtsen family is obvious: a father with a bold vision for training and a son with incredible talent and grit, who not only rose to the top of the sport athletically but changed the way legions of runners approach training for their event.

Both coaches borrowed heavily from a pioneering compatriot—Gjert Ingebrigtsen from Marius Bakken,[1] and Peter Coe from Frank Horwill. Like Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Josh Kerr, Coe also had fierce rivals: fellow Brits Steve Ovett and Steve Cram, each of whom snatched medals from Coe in dramatic fashion.

That’s where the similarities stop, though—Sebastian and his father never had a falling out, and the structure of Coe-style training is almost diametrically opposite to that of Ingebrigtsen-style training.

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A guide to post-race workouts for runners

Track season is nearly upon us and that’s got me thinking about a very track-centric question: when, if ever, should you do a workout after doing a race?

This strategy—a post-race workout—When used correctly, post-race workouts can help maintain an adequate training load and balance out the distribution of speeds within your training schedule, even when you’re racing frequently or have scheduling obligations to compete early in the season, when you’d like to be getting in more general and supportive training.

So, let’s take a look at what post race workouts are, who should use them, and when.

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Percy Cerutty’s training philosophy for distance runners, 50 years on

Fifty years ago, on August 14, 1975, the great Australian coach Percy Cerutty passed away in Portsea, Australia—the same sandy, windswept coastal town where he trained some of Australia’s top middle distance runners in the 1950s and 1960s.

Cerutty was best-known for the accomplishments of his coaching charges John Landy and Herb Elliott—Landy being the second person to break four minutes in the mile and a bronze medalist at 1500m at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, and Herb Elliott being the greatest miler of his day, who at age 22 was Olympic champion, Commonwealth champion, and world-record holder in the mile (3:54.5) and 1500m (3:35.6).

Cerutty also had a longstanding coaching rivalry with New Zealander Arthur Lydiard, whose name would become synonymous with high-mileage training during the 1960s.

Perhaps because Cerutty intentionally eschewed narrowly “systematic” approaches to training, there’s very little discussion of “Cerutty-style” training the way you hear runners discussing “Lydiard-style” training. Cerutty left behind no pre-written workout template, no system of formulas, and little in the way of universal dictums for training.[1] He did, however, leave behind quite a lot of writing.

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Individual variation in aerobic and anaerobic energy contributions to different events

Fast-twitch Frannie and Slow-twitch Sallie face off in an ultimate battle to discover who is truly the queen of the mile

Many books on training and exercise physiology (including mine) begin with a discussion of aerobic and anaerobic energy production. The next logical question to ask is how much these two energy systems contribute to the various running events—how “aerobic” is, say, the 800m? Such a question is sure to spark heated debate online, but I have always been skeptical of such figures, for two reasons.

First, some of the methods that were traditionally used to come up with the aerobic vs. anaerobic contribution to a particular event have not held up to scrutiny.

Take the concept of “oxygen debt”—the idea that you could measure anaerobic energy expenditure by measuring post-exercise oxygen consumption, as your body “paid” for its anaerobic energy production. This concept was known to be shaky as early as 1984, and though later research has improved on the accuracy of these metrics considerably, many of the papers that coaches and training books cite do not use these modern, improved methods.

Second, I have a broader disagreement with the search for one number: to say, for example that the 800m is “65% aerobic” (as Joe Vigil’s book does) or ~50% (as Coe/Martin’s book does) glosses over the fact that there is tremendous individual variation in how much aerobic versus anaerobic energy goes into a given event.[1]

In fact, that range of variation looks like this:

Event % Anaerobic (range for nine out of ten runners)
800m 15–33%
1000m 10–25%
1500m / mile 8–20%
3000m / 2 miles 4–10%
5000m 3–6%
10,000m 2–4%

Where do these numbers come from? Read on to find out!

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Marius Bakken in his own words: double threshold, lactate testing, altitude, periodization, and more

Double threshold training is one of the hottest topics in distance training right now, with many runners aiming to replicate Jakob Ingebrigtsen's incredible success in the 1500m, 3000m, and 5000m. The double threshold method does not originate with the Ingebrigtsens, though—it was first pioneered by Norwegian 5k runner Marius Bakken.

Marius Bakken’s 2022 blog post on the Norwegian Model of training has become a key resource for English-speaking runners interested in the practical implementation of double threshold training. Aside from that blog post and an excellent 2025 follow-up, though, English-language resources on double threshold training are lacking—most of us have to make do with second-hand recaps of Norwegian-language articles or interviews.

One of the main resources for Norwegian-speaking runners has been Bakken’s appearances on the Norwegian-language podcast I det lange løp (“In the Long Run”). That podcast, which ran from 2019–2023, hosted Marius Bakken several times to talk about double threshold training.

In this blog post, I am presenting what I hope will be another significant English-language resource for understanding the practical use of double threshold training: a translated version of Marius Bakken’s two-part interview on I det lange løp, plus commentary and footnotes.

The interview covers Bakken’s personal training history, the development of the double threshold method, the use of altitude training, intervals versus continuous runs for improving threshold, and more. I also wrote up a short commentary that follows the text of the interview.

Make yourself your favorite beverage and find a comfy spot to sit down, because there is a ton of in-depth training wisdom in this interview—the original interview runs nearly two hours, and even in writing, it’s quite a long read!

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The science of running in super spikes: New data on Nike, Adidas, and PUMA track shoes

Lab scientist holding a prototype track and field super spike

Super spikes are track spikes for middle and long distance events that use the two key innovations in shoe tech that have revolutionized marathon shoes: “super foam” with high deformation and excellent energy return, and carbon fiber plates in the midsole.

I have a longer and more detailed article in the works that takes a deep dive into the biomechanics of super shoes more generally, but I wanted to get this post out since it’s track season and people want to run fast!

The impetus for this post was a fascinating new preprint on the benefits of super spikes from a multi-site collaboration involving research labs in Spain, the US, and Canada. The focus of the study is middle distance performance in super spikes versus traditional spikes.

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Check out my new book on marathon training!