Gary Cohen is an enthusiast for the sport of running. This enthusiasm has branched out to include magazine/essay writing, interviews, coaching and public speaking. In addition to those activities, Gary also leads trail runs in Central Florida and announces track meets.
GCR:What was your training mileage in high school, college and beyond? TF: When I first started out in high school I was running 50 to 60 miles a week. After I graduated from high school I ran from 75 to 86 miles a week that summer. I was already getting good results from that level of mileage as I ran a 2:30 marathon. I knew that I had built up endurance over the years from playing soccer but needed more miles to continue building my distance base. I kept steadily increasing my mileage during college so that by the time I graduated I was up to 130 to 140 miles a week. I think the high mileage and avoiding injuries were the keys to my success. GCR:Did you ever do any extremely high mileage weeks just to ‘test the waters?’ TF: My biggest training weeks ever were two 200-mile weeks that Bill Rodgers and I did together – one week at his place and one week at my place. We either did two 15-mile runs or three 10-mile runs each day. Both times it was disastrous as it was way too much running and whether we did two 15-milers or three 10-milers it didn’t work. All we were doing was eating, sleeping and running and we both agreed it was too much. I found that my best high mileage weeks were around 160 miles. I would run 150 to 160 miles a week for about five weeks when I was getting ready for the Boston Marathon. It felt pretty easy, but 200 miles a week was insane. There just wasn’t enough time to recover and we couldn’t eat enough food to nourish our bodies.