“I do not recommend that any athlete copy the training procedure of another… Just as no two athletes have identical form, so no two athletes need have the same training program. Literally as well as figuratively, there is more than one road to Rome.”
Like to claim I invented running outdoors the winter of ’72. Didn’t know any other adults with a job doing it.
The Danbury YMCA was awarding free t-shirts for anybody who could run a total of one hundred miles. 100M.
Remember only one short middle-aged guy wearing that shirt like it was an impossible feat. On sight, I didn’t like him. Short men with condescending attitudes have galled me since I was a six-foot-tall twelve-year-old.
Plus there was that free shirt.
It was February in Connecticut, so any running was done in the gym on a track at the ceiling over the basketball court. Twenty-five laps to the mile. Around and around and around and around and around. Do that five more times. That’s a mile. 25 laps per mile. No wonder only insecure midgets wore the free shirt.
125. That first day, I did 125 circuits, listening to a ball game below where I’d much rather be playing.
Five miles – constantly turning and leaning – on two bad ankles. Shows some aptitude for suffering, I like to think.
So, I took my game outdoors and the rest is, well, the stuff of running legend.
Legends were few and far between back then. Training wisdom was in real short supply. Knew I wanted to get faster and then Nina Kuscsik won the Boston Marathon, the first OFFICIAL women’s winner of this grand American tradition.
Boston ’73 was a year away. Thought if that housewife/nurse/mother could run Boston, maybe I could, too.
I went to the mountain top and I found the teachings of Fred Wilt. Only 5’8″ tall, which I never knew until now, he had written a couple of books even the slowest kid in the class could understand.
His books were instructional, inspiring, invaluable. His books made my world better.
I did not know Coach Wilt, which makes me sad. Know some other folks – makes me happy – who did know him.
Joe Henderson, now retired in Tracktown USA, said, “Fred Wilt wrote How They Train in 1958, and it was my first big inspiration — as a runner first, but with a more lasting influence as a writer. Wilt recommended keeping a running log, which I did immediately and which evolved into a writing journal that continues today.”
Researched my own e-mails and there was this excerpt from a 2020 conversation with Jeff Johnson.
Jeff was once introduced as “The Forrest Gump of Running” and that seems spot-on.
“Fred was writing a book, either RUN, RUN, RUN, or How They Train. I think the latter. He wanted Hal Higdon to draw pictures of the various runners to illustrate his book. Editor Bert Nelson, running the mag [Track & Field News] out of his Los Altos, CA, house would have been a photo source for Hal, except he cleaned out his photo files every 3-6 months because he had no room in the house to file photos, and his garage was the warehouse for his book business. This was 1958.
“But this kid mowed his lawn, shipped books 2-3 days a week, and stole his trash because he thought the photos were neat. So Bert put Fred in touch with the kid, who in turn sent photos to Hal as requested. The kid bitched about not having a coach for the last two years of HS, all the LAHS kids were coaching themselves (quite successfully) but the kid felt he was falling short of his potential.
“So, Fred sent him a one-week plan to repeat ad infinitum. The kid followed the plan. He PR’ed in January, 4:41 mile, but never really had much of a spring season because 1) he got mono, 2) there were four kids better than him, and 3) the kid was the best high and low hurdler on the team. The kid still got 5th in the mile in the Santa Clara Valley Athletic league, while his superiors were distracted by the 800 and 2M.
“Fred had the kid running 20 x 440 in :90 and a 3M on the track in 18:00 on the following day…threshold runs before anyone heard of threshold runs. The kid thrived on that training, but rarely got to race, what with his hurdles expertise.”
Can I use this, I asked, a couple years later.
“The anecdote is fine and accurate, as far as it goes. The kid failed to mention how impressed he was by being introduced to threshold runs. (FYI: Ingebritsen and Mike Smith at NAU [Northern Arizona University] are famous for running double threshold sessions on the same day. Jack Daniels’ “formulas” state that threshold runs should constitute 8% of weekly mileage during an 18-week training cycle. I think it likely that 25-30% of mileage could constructively be threshold training, and threshold runs could also be present with the base training period, along with longer sub-threshold runs.
“If only we had known.
“Also, Fred’s prescription of 440s in :90 and 3M steady runs in 18 min. were a bit too slow for a 4:41 miler. I usually ran 84-85 and 17:40 or so on our sandy (and pitched uphill) HS track. I was running faster by “feel”, but Jack Daniel’s training pace tables published a couple of decades later (the VDot tables) indicated that my paces were more appropriate to my ability. And, I must say, they DID feel right, a moderate-but-not-hard effort.”
So, what you are saying is, Jack D. Welch, Hal Higdon, Joe Henderson and Jeff Johnson all worked for Bert Nelson at one time or another. You might say Bert really knew how to pick’em.
I asked Hal for an anecdote or two.
He came through like a pioneer with outstanding recall.
“Fred and I were good friends for a long time, beginning with a few national championships when I finished far behind him. While still an FBI agent and before coaching the women’s team at Purdue, Fred worked with a small number of elite runners, the most successful being Buddy Edelen.
“I was near the peak of my and wanted to take one last shot at winning the Boston Marathon. So, I accepted Fred’s guidance 1963-65 when I had my most success as a runner.
“But that’s background and not an anecdote. Let’s see what I can come up with.”
Soon afterwards.
“After the end of his own career as an elite athlete (Olympian in 1948 and 1952) Fred Wilt worked with a small number of runners, who he coached by mail. In addition to me, the runners included Ron Wallingford of Canada, Olympic quarter-miler Ollan Cassell and, most famously, Buddy Edelen, who set a marathon world record of 2:13.28 in 1963. We would fill out diary pages and mail them to Fred, who would comment on our workouts in red pen, then mail the pages back to us. (I still have all my diary pages for 1963, 1964 and 1965, when he coached me.)
“Buddy was a bit of a rebel—or pretended to be a rebel while teaching school and training in England. He drank beer! Buddy didn’t hide that fact from his coach, who was a bit of a purist and felt alcohol interfered with proper training. In addition to faithfully mailing his diary pages to Fred each week, Buddy regularly corresponded with me. I liked to believe I served as his anchor back home in America. In 1963, Buddy and I joined a group of British runners to run the Kosice Marathon, arguably the world’s most prestigious marathon at that time other than the Olympic Marathon. We flew from London to Prague, then took a train to Kosice in eastern Czechoslovakia, not far from the Ukrainian (Soviet) border.
“Buddy won the race, running 2:15:09.6; I finished far behind. As part of the lure to attract the world’s best marathoners, Kosice hosted us post-race in a day of sightseeing in the Tatra mountains. We then took a sleeper car back to Prague. Buddy and I shared a compartment and during our journey, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and started to smoke. I suspected that Buddy probably only smoked one cigarette from that pack. He was sending an eye-winking message back to Fred, figuring that I would serve as an informer. (I like to feel I did not.)
“Though injured, Buddy finished sixth in the Olympic Marathon the next year. The problem was sciatica, which effectively ended his career. Without sciatica affecting his training in the months leading up to the Olympics, I like to feel that Buddy would have finished in the medals. If Buddy still were alive, I am sure he would agree that he owed his success to the coaching of Fred Wilt.
“For a period of a half dozen or more years, Fred Wilt was my shoe supplier. Adidas paid little attention to road racers back in the 1950’s, being more interested in track athletes. Nike had not yet been born. Fred kept looking for good shoes: spikes that could get you through 3 miles on an indoor board track or 26 miles in a marathon. At one time Fred had me in Karhu (Finnish) shoes; another time, even a Russian pair. I finished too many races with bloody blisters.
“Then in 1963, Fred discovered Onitsuka, a Japanese shoe company. I would trace a picture of my feet on a sheet of paper and air mail it to Japan. A few weeks would pass while some Japanese shoe master hand-crafted a lightweight pair to be air-mailed back to me at no charge. And no more blisters. But Fred also secured Onitsuka shoes for other runners as I discovered at the starting line of the 1964 Boston Marathon. Earlier, I had returned to Fred a pair of shoes that did not quite fit. This was at a time when I wrote my name on the back of my shoes for identification. Standing next to me on the line at Boston was Ron Wallingford of Canada. Written on the back of Ron’s shoes was the name “Higdon.” He finished third in the race; I got fifth (first American).
“About that same time, an Oregon athlete named Phil Knight took an around-the-world trip after graduating from business school at Stanford. In Japan, Knight stopped at the Onitsuka factory and secured an exclusive right to sell their shoes (renamed Tiger) in the US. Several years later, Onitsuka tried to narrow Knight’s market to Pacific Northwest only. He balked and started his own shoe company, Nike.
“And that was the end of the free shoes.”
*
“Fred Wilt offered one time-saving workout he used on a track near his home in Lafayette, Indiana. Eight laps. Two miles. The first four laps a warm-up jog. Then four 220 repeats separated by four 220 (interval) jogs. Head home, having wasted as little time as possible.”
A contributor to the sport as an athlete, coach and author, Fred Wilt was an outstanding distance runner at Indiana University under USTFCCCA Hall of Fame coach Billy Hayes and a two-time Olympian. Wilt later became the head women’s track & field and cross country coach at Purdue University from 1978-89, leading the Boilermakers to a .763 record in cross country and a .797 record in track & field.
At Indiana, Wilt was a two-time NCAA champion, winning a cross country crown and an outdoor two-mile title. He also won eight national AAU titles and twice competed for the U.S. in the Olympic 10,000m finals (1948 and 1952). In 1950, Wilt was named the Sullivan Award winner as the nation’s top amateur athlete; in 1952, at the age of 32, Wilt set an indoor world record in the two-mile run and later broke an 18-year-old American record in the 5000m.
An FBI agent during his competitive days, Wilt’s interests later turned to the technical side of track & field. His book, How They Train, was a long-time best seller; he helped start Track Technique, one of the best technical journals in the world; and he advised various athletes, including 1964 Olympian and former marathon world record holder Buddy Edelen.
In 1978, nearing the age of 60 and retired from the FBI, Wilt embarked on a new career as the head women’s cross country and track & field coach at Purdue. Purdue finished as runners-up at the 1983 Big Ten cross country championships and at the 1986 Big Ten outdoor meet before winning their first Big Ten women’s title in outdoor track & field in 1987. He coached 17 different All-Americans, including the 1982 national champion in the 3000m, Andrea Marek.
Wilt’s accomplishments are recognized in the Purdue University Athletics Hall of Fame, the USATF Hall of Fame, and the Indiana University Athletics Hall of Fame.
Cross country 1941…cross country team captain 1941…track 1941…won Big Ten and NCAA individual championships in cross country, IU’s first individual winner…in track won Big Ten two mile indoor championship and NCAA outdoor two mile title…member of 1948 U.S. Olympic team, placing 11th in 10,000 meters, and 1952 Olympic team, placing 21st in the 10,000 meters…won Sullivan Award for nation’s outside amateur athlete in 1950..set world indoor 2-mile record in 1952.
Wilt’s book Run Run Run was published in 1964 by Track & Field News. It contained chapters written by Wilt, notable coaches, including New Zealand’s Arthur Lydiard, and Soviet gold medalist Vladimir Kuts, and went through six printings over the next ten years.
In 1975, Wilt coined the term plyometrics while observing Soviet athletes warming up. He reached out to Dr. Michael Yessis, who had previously introduced this concept to the United States through Russian translation of Verkhoshansky’s work. This inspired their later collaboration, to get this information out to U.S. coaches, and the book Soviet Theory, Technique and Training for Running and Hurdling.
Records Held
World Record: 2 mi. – 8:51 (February 23, 1952 – )
World Record: 5,000 m – 14:26.80
Championships
1948 Olympics: 10,000 m (11th)
1952 Olympics: 10,000 m (21st)
1951 AAU Indoors: 1 mi. (1st)
1941 NCAA: 2 mi. (1st)
Results
Men’s 10,000 metres
| Games | Age | City | Sport | Country | Phase | Unit | Rank | T(H) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1948 Summer | 27 | London | Athletics | United States | Final Standings | 11 | no time | ||
| 1952 Summer | 31 | Helsinki | Athletics | United States | Final Standings | 21 | 31:04.0 |
Extensive research suggests not a lot has been written about the estimable and foundational Coach Fred Wilt.
Ergo, the following link.
I continue to enjoy the work of Roger Robinson who gets the WILD DOG AWARD for Best Article I Could Find.
And if Edelen had only heeded Wilt’s advice to take more rest and focus on the Olympics, we might even now be dating marathon history from a Wilt-inspired American medal in 1964.
https://www.runnersworld.com/advanced/a20848925/fred-wilt-fbi-the-double-agent-of-running/
5.0 out of 5 stars Run, Run, Run (the original coaching text!!!!!) Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2009
When I was in high school my family moved from Washington state to Colorado. In the early/mid 70’s Runner’s World was barely circulated and there was one shoe company called “Blue Ribbon Sports” that soon became something called “Nike.” I had no true track coach and no one outside of a running store the size of a bedroom who could give me advice on how to train. His name is Joe Arrazola and he turned me on to Fred Wilt’s classic book Run, Run, Run and from Arrazola’s help and Fred Wilt’s book I managed to run sub 9:30 in the 2-mile and 4:16 in the mile(we ran in yards in those days) at altitude. With a scholarship to a small NAIA school closer to sea-level I stuck to the basics I learned in this great book and got to the U.S. Olympic Trials. In my mind, this is still the book that all other track and field distance training books rest on. It is still on the ground floor for any kid who wants to get good and know what they are doing in practice to get there. It is too bad that this book isn’t reprinted and in wider circulation. I’ve gone through 2 copies over the years and need a third for my library of track texts. Jay Edwards
https://www.functionalpathtrainingblog.com/2010/09/fred-wilt-game-changer.html