i shudder to think i'm old enough to be someone's grandfather...but there it is....anyway, blackknight, 70, 80, 90 miles a week was fairly common back then. mainly because running was the only mass participant game in town-- health clubs few and far between; road cycling obscure, arty and expensive; triathlon non-existent. so if you weren't into ball sports, that was it. the running magazines were all reporting the top guys doing about 110 to 130 miles a week.
i got started because i'd been playing tennis and found out that my heroes, stan smith and rod laver, were 'jogging' as much at 2 or 3 miles at a time to improve their tennis fitness. then, we all watched frank shorter in the 1976 olympic marathon duke it out in a heroic race with waldemar cierpinski and were informed that these two were sustaining a 5 minute per mile pace as they hammered back and forth at each other. my hair stood on end watching that. i WANTED to learn how to run 5 minute pace!!
i eventually learned that when you start in your mid 20s and are 6'3" and weight 170 pounds when you have 2% body fat, that's not likely. shorter was 5'10"/140 in '76. if you look at the successful marathoners nowadays, you will notice that they have super light frames. big engine/little frame is the game in marathon. i was much better at 1 mile to 10k. the kenyans who dominate these days can FLOAT at 5 minute pace. they get out to about 21, 22 miles, and then start dropping the hammer on each other with 4:40 per mile bursts. its unreal. jaw dropping.
