Training Trends

Distance running training philosophy has changed throughout the years. Well, really, it goes back and forth between two "schools"- more distance vs. more intensity.

• Late 1800's [time on your feet]: long walks with the occasional bout of sprinting for a short distance
• Early 1900's [distance]: long runs + walks and a little bit of short, high intensity intervals
• 40's and 50's [intensity]: lots and lots of shorter intervals (i.e., 80x200m) or lots of longer intervals at a higher intensity (i.e., 10x400m run in a descending fashion)... the latest and greatest school of thought was to get your heart rate up to 180bpm during the intervals (basically max out) and recover around 120bpm
• 60's and 70's [hard/easy cycles]: the "base mileage phase" was emphasized again, but interval workouts still had their place in most training schedules. While weekly mileage remained pretty high (owing to a lot of long, easy runs), interval workouts were incorporated to help athletes get used to running at their goal race pace.
• 80's and 90's [science]: the hard/easy philosophy was maintained, except instead of an entire cycle being long, easy miles followed by another cycle of hard, tempo miles, both workouts were incorporated into the weekly training schedule. "Science" made its debut in training, and finding your VO2max became all the rage, which popularized Zone Training (hence hard/easy workouts happily co-existing in the same week!).    
• 2000's [very yes]: a little mix of everything depending upon the athlete, what they're training for, how much time they have, injuries... training has got "all crazy" and even begun incorporating hard/easy paces into the same workout [known as The Progression Run - i.e., the runs from hell that coach has us do sometimes where we start off at marathon pace and descend to 10k pace].