J
Jeff Benjamin
Guest
The Florida Track Club, courtesy of Jeff Galloway
Jeff Galloway is a beastmaster. In 1972, he made the Olympic team at 10,000m and paced his teammate, Jack Bacheler to the marathon team. A fine runner, Jeff was on the 1972 team with Kenny Moore. This is Jeff's recollections of his meetings and what he learned from Kenny Moore and how it improved his marathon.
Jeff Galloway has spent his adult life running and teaches several generations of runners how to run, and one of the main tenants on his marathon training program is a 27-29 mile run, one of the huge reasons why Kenny Moore was so successful at the marathon, running an average of 80 miles a week.
This is his recollections of the late Kenny Moore, who we lost a few weeks ago. This column, the 7th in the series by jeff Benjamin, was a salute to the late Kenny Moore. We thank Jeff Galloway, one of the most fun guys in the sport, and his recollections.
Remembering Kenny Moore - 8th In A Series- From Jeff Galloway
By Jeff Benjamin
"Kenny Moore and I were among the US distance athletes who had a chance to qualify for and run the Olympic marathon in Munich, 1972 where the USA marathon team finished higher than any country at any Olympics before or since.(1st, 4th, and 9th). Most of us were self-coached and un-sponsored. (sponsorship was not allowed if one wanted to compete in the Olympics or even in US National competition. There was no career path in running--no running industry. We were striving to be the best that we could be, took part-time jobs to get by, slept on couches (or floors) to cut travel costs, and ate energy bars for breakfast, lunch, and sometimes for dinner. It was a cooperative community, learning from, sharing, and helping one another..
In our travels, I would hang out with Kenny and learn about how, through his Sports Illustrated articles, he chose words,, probed for background experiences, and transformed what went on during a track meet into something "Joe six-pack" would read. As we talked about how we trained, I learned from Kenny in 5 minutes, how to improve my marathon time by five minutes!
Like most 26.2 specialists of my era, my longest run before a competitive marathon was 20-21 miles. As I continued to "hit the fatigue wall" in every race, around 20-21 miles, I started increasing my weekly mileage to 100, then 120, and finally 140miles--but continued to poop out with 5-6 miles to go. Kenny hadn't run a 100 week in his life. The secret that kept him running strong to the finish was running a 30-mile training run every 2-3 weeks.
I immediately changed my training and my performances moved up to world-class level. This also became the concept I used in training runners at all levels to finish marathons or run faster.
Kenny's spirit will live on in his writing, his movie scripts including WITHOUT LIMITS (about Steve Prefontaine), and every time I get the question "why do we have to run 26-29 miles before a marathon in the Galloway program.
Thank you, Kenny!"
JEFF GALLOWAY
1972 US OLYMPIAN
Friend of Kenny Moore