Pete Magill website

Pete Magill is a masters runner hailing from California and is about a year older than I.  He is an elite American runner, having completed a five kilometer race in under fifteen minutes.  I am currently working on breaking twenty two minutes for a five kilometer run. He has many more accomplishments too numerous to list here.  I regard him as someone who has mastered the art of running as evidenced by his racing performances and who also develops training plans which have proven to achieve results.
 
He recently was profiled in an issue of Running Times.  He has a website called Younger Legs for Older Runnsers at http://petemagill.blogspot.com/.  Unfortunately it appears the website is not active anymore as Mr. Magill simply doesn't have the time to feed the site on a regular basis.

I had incorrectly typecast Pete Magill as some laser focused running fanatic with no semblance of a personality because of a all consuming dedication toward running.   After reviewing hs website which contained some live videos of his training tips, the man is down to earth and very engaging.  My take on his training is that you need to keep things fun, by employing practices and and a variety of technique drills which he has found to be personally effective.

Pete used to be a four pack a day smoker.  He began to get back in shape at age 39,  in large part because he had a son he wanted to share his life with in a more enriching and responsible  manner. At age 41, he was garnishing accolades for his impressive performances.

I found myself laughing at some of his antics in the training videos.  Case in point., he has a marathon training video where he addresses the nuances of  grabbing a cup of fluid and drinking the fluid from a water station attendant. The runner who is demonstrating how to grab the cup while running incorrectly gauges  the location of the cup and knocks the cup out of the attendant's hand, spilling the entire contents on the water station attendant (played by Pete himself)..




Excerpted from Running Times  website ...

Typical two weeks of training for Magill (pace of training runs varies from 6:00 to 8:00/mile depending on how his body feels):

Sunday: Medium run (approximately 10–11 miles)
Monday: a.m. --- Short run (approximately 5–6 miles) p.m. -- Medium run
Tuesday: a.m. -- Short run p.m. --- 3-mile warm-up, 20 x 400m @ 5K effort (approximately 70 seconds) with 100m jog recoveries; 3-mile warm-down
Wednesday: Medium run
Thursday: a.m. -- Short run; p.m. -- Medium run
Friday: a.m. -- Short run; p.m. -- Technique drills; short run afterward
Saturday: Long run (approximately 14-15 miles)

Second week:

Same, except Tuesday p.m. speed work, which he exchanges for 3 x set of 1 mile at 15K pace, 1200m at 5K pace, 800m at 3K pace, 400m at mile pace; all with 400m jog recoveries; 3-mile warm-up and 2-mile warm-down. If race on Saturday, he does only one workout on Thursday (medium run) and Friday (20 minutes of jogging and stretching).

Training philosophy

"Put away your watch, stop counting miles and start listening to the body. Our bodies will tell us more accurately how fast and far to run than a watch or training log ever can. And our bodies will warn us when we're courting disaster - injury or overtraining - long before our minds are willing to accept the premise. More importantly, when we learn to listen to our bodies, we learn how to race."