Said Aouita: Lessons of A Legend
While there have been many exciting eras throughout the history of track and field, one could certainly argue that the 1980’s were the peak. As we left the running boom of the 1970’s, athletics popularity was at an all-time high and die hard fans were treated to such spectacles as the classic rivalry of Seb Coe and Steve Ovett, the epic battles of Alberto Salazar and Rob de Castella in the marathon, the multi-faceted dominance of Carl Lewis and Florence Griffin-Joyner, and many more. Inevitably, as runners, these topics come up as we stretch with friends or pass the time relaxing after a long run. Noticeably however, there is a name that is often forgotten or outright unknown in the first place, despite the prominent mark he set on the decade and on the sport as a whole.
This athlete spent years at the top of the food chain in distances ranging from 800 meters all the way to 10,000. An athlete who only lost four of his 119 races from 1983 to 1990. An athlete that was the first in history to break the 13 minute barrier in the 5,000 meters. This athlete was the venerable Said Aouita, a Moroccan runner whose career was additionally highlighted by a range of world records, world firsts, and medals on the international stage. With what amounts to both a unique and fascinating pedigree, why has Aouita largely been forgotten by the track community? Why is his career still so intriguing today? Perhaps most importantly, what can we learn from his training and his time on top of the world and how can we apply it ourselves?
The Beginning of a Runner
Said Aouita was born on November 2nd, 1959 in Kenitra, Morocco. At the time of his birth, the country had existed for just three years having recently gained independence from nearly 60 years of joint French and Spanish rule. Additionally, the Royal Moroccan Athletics Federation struggled to gain traction having been founded in 1957. They had yet to appear in the Olympic games and would first break onto the world stage in Rome the following year. While they would in fact gain their first track and field medal with a silver in the mens marathon in Rome, it would be 24 years before Aouita himself would capture their second. With support for track and field not only in its infancy, it was also fighting an uphill battle against soccer, which was the nation’s most popular sport and one it found far more initial success with.
It was within this backdrop Aouita began his running career. Unsurprisingly given his environment, almost all of his childhood was spent on the soccer field, rather than the track. While certainly an excellent athlete in this sphere, playing on teams as high as the regional level, international stardom seemed out of reach. Then in 1977, an 18 year old Aouita ran a 3,000 meter time trial as part of his soccer training and set a Moroccan national record of 8:01. His coaches and teachers went straight to work pushing him towards the track. Rather suddenly, a future as a runner seemed to be more than an option but in fact a true opportunity.
Though naturally talented, the first few years Aouita spent pursuing running were defined by trial and error training conducted largely on his own. This left him initially unprepared and thus unsuccessful as his career grew to new levels of international competition. While in large part due to the lack of national support available at the time; specifically as there was a lack of adept coaching and elite level talent in his home country to train with, it was regarding these challenges that his training took on its unique structure and perhaps allowed him to not only be so successful in his later years but so versatile. Aside from his success it is his unique training that makes him such an interesting case to study.
The Training
It would take Aouita around six years to perfect his approach to training and gain the experience necessary to succeed on the international stage. One of the first pillars of his training to take shape was that of his mileage. While it is certainly still very common for professional runners, both middle and long distance, to incorporate high aerobic volume in their training, it was especially common in the 1980’s with many of his competitors regarding mileage as a primary component in their training. In fact, volume was widely considered the driving factor behind the success of many runners. However, while his colleagues were running 100 plus mile weeks Aouita went the opposite direction. Initially, when he looked around the world and saw these trends amongst other elite athletes he attempted to follow suit but as he trained more and more, he began to feel it was doing him more harm than good. He noted early on that he felt the higher volume took intensity away from his track sessions as well as made him feel more prone to injury. As a result, he began running between 50 and 70 miles per week. This was performed in an atypical weekly structure that would ignore set days for workouts, instead running purely by feel. This allowed Aouita the ultimate flexibility to schedule around his track sessions waiting until he was 100% recovered before attempting a workout.
While unique on its own, a few other key parameters began to take shape as well. He would run 6-8 sessions per week the longest of which was between 15-16 kilometers. He ran his easy sessions for time as opposed to mileage and a typical session would be around 45 or 50 minutes. The quality of these miles far exceeded the quantity. The track was of course the focus of his training and in addition to his unique structure, sessions freely rotated within training blocks between target distances. This was based on his upcoming races as opposed to perhaps one goal race at the end of a training block. This meant that Aouita was consistently training speeds for races from 800 meters to 5,000 and beyond. Aouita was also an adamant believer in the power of altitude training. He could be found specifically in the Moroccan city of Ifran and Mexico City where altitude ranged from 1,650 to 2,240 meters. Additionally, time trials were frequently conducted in training, especially shorter distances ranging up to 3,000 meters as they were less damaging and still provided the benefits of experiencing various race paces on a regular basis. For Said there would be no questions of what he was capable of on race day. Finally, his training year was planned around one big build towards cross country season which he used to build yearly strength and another build to his spring track season where his most ambitious goals were.
Results
Following this program, Aouita would win 115 out of 119 of his races between 1983 and 1990. During this period he would set world records in the 1,500, 2,000, 3,000, and 5,000 meters. He famously became the first athlete to ever break the 13 minute barrier in the 5,000 with a 12:58.39 and the only athlete ever to medal in the Olympics at both the 800 meters and 5,000 meters with a gold in the 5,000 in 1984 in Los Angeles and a bronze in the 800 in 1988 in Seoul. This record is further embellished by a variety of wins at the World Championships and the Mediterranean Games from the 800 to the 5,000 and also in a variety of cross country and steeplechase victories as well. Amazingly, he was also a world class competitor in the 10k, running a personal best of 27:26.11 in a victory over 1984 Olympic gold medalist Alberto Cova.
His other personal bests include:
1:43.86 in the 800m3:29.46 in the 1,500m
3:46.76 in the mile
7:29.45 in the 3,000m
and 8:21 in the 3,000 meter steeplechase
Aouita’s legacy of success was not only highlighted by these moments, but by the moments he inspired as well. Runners like Khalid Skah; the winner of the 10,000 meter in the 1992 Olympics, Hicham El-Gerrouj; current world record holder in the outdoor mile, and Nourreddine Morceli; Algerian gold medal winner and 1,500 world record holder, all credit Aouita directly with inspiring them as fellow North Africans as their own careers took off in the years directly following Aouita’s success. The prominence of athletes from Northern Africa in the time after his birth was massive and his affect on that should not be understated. The now steady stream of success Morrocco specifically has had from the 1990s to the present proves this as well.
Training Takeaways
Upon examination, these achievements in addition to his unique versatility, place Aouita in a category almost unto himself. This is certainly in large part due to the unorthodox training that allowed his fitness to flourish at a variety of distances. However, while Aouita may have been an elite level athlete there are still many lessons to be gleaned from his training irrespective of class. The first thing we can examine is the mileage and, for Aouita, the most important subsequent affect of this mileage. While 50-70 miles per week is of course still a great many miles for the average athlete, in the context of his achievements this was noticeably lower than the typical volume of many of his colleagues. This tells us that aside from the fact that there is very rarely one purely correct way to to do anything, that it is indeed very possible to build incredible strength without incredible volume. His lower relative mileage was simply more conducive to his body and his recovery and especially, when coupled with the practice of ignoring the typical training week with set workout days, ensured every time he hit the track it was at full strength ready to maximize his performance on the days that mattered. As such, we should all continuously examine our own training and evaluate the degree to which our own individual processes are working. It’s easy to fall into a typical training structure but what works for some does not always work for all, especially as we try to maximize our results and the margins for these results become smaller. Aouita’s early recognition of this and subsequent adjustments leading up to 1983, certainly affected his training in a positive manner as we can see from the results he was able to achieve thereafter.
The next thing we can assess is the structure of his sessions. Aouita typically ran between 6 and 8 sessions per week on a free floating schedule. This was based on feel where, depending on his upcoming race calendar, he could add, push, or entirely pull a session to boost his recovery. We can conclude from this knowledge that learning to evaluate his body was not only a skill he made a concerted effort to perfect, but also that it was one of the premier portions of his planning. The category of mileage is equally important in this equation as well. The majority of his days off the track were conducted only for time. Seeing as our bodies are unaware of the mileage we subject ourselves to, the only thing they can be aware of is how long we go and how hard. Said’s success with long term commitment to time based volume shows us that many athletes are too often focused on mileage to the point of detriment. An athlete will often push their easy days the extra mile to hit arbitrary goals as opposed to focusing on days that will make them faster. The same logic of course can apply to intensity. Trying to find a specific pace on our easy days can also be a trap that takes effort away from our workouts much in the same manner that mileage can for those of us seriously training for races.
As for the workouts themselves, one of the key factors we can examine in Aouita’s case is his implementation and combination of speed, speed endurance, time trials, and race specific workouts. The combined efforts of these focuses are what made Aouita the runner he was and the aspect of his training that is perhaps the most interesting. While all of these had similar theoretical effects on his running we will discuss each one briefly. In the case of speed he frequented true top end speed sessions to include workouts like 200 meter repeats, 150’s at maximum effort with full recovery, and flying sprints of 50-100 meters. While important to have a strong finishing kick at his level of competition these top end sessions also served the purpose of raising his overall speed threshold/reserve and running economy thus improving his aerobic capability by proxy in longer efforts as well.
Similarly for speed endurance, he spent a large part of his early season training focusing on these types of workouts. Reps for this type of workout would typically be slightly slower than race pace but with greater overall volume than the target race distance in the workout. For example, a workout of 6×300 at 90-95% of perceived 800 meter effort. The volume is greater than an 800 meter race but at paces slightly slower and reps not quite half the distance, the wear and tear on the body is less. While more self explanatory in its importance in building a strong engine for an upcoming season, as with his top end sessions these workouts additionally promoted versatility and strength in longer races such as the 5,000. 5,000 pace just doesn’t feel as hard with the developed speed endurance of an athlete capable of running a 1:44 800 meter. Many runners today commit to solely doing speed work for the distance they are training for but that leaves much on the table in regards to running economy, strength, and potential in your goal race. Coupled with the right balance of aerobic stimuli and race pace workouts, next level speed endurance left Aouita better prepared than the average 5,000 meter specialist opponent at the end of a race.
The easiest way to think about the effects of these workouts on Aouita’s longer performances is perhaps with a simple example. Imagine a runner whose fastest mile is 4 minutes racing against one who has a top mile time of 5 minutes. When racing the runner with the higher top end capability is at a lower relative effort than that of his opponent. At 5 minute pace who will be able to hang on longer? The athlete at 100 percent effort will surely struggle more as they rely on their endurance at near max effort compared to the athlete with more speed reserve. This disparity can be the difference between staying in contact or having enough energy left at the finish for a strong kick. Aouita’s mastery of his speed for middle distance not only gave him the strength of his kick but also allowed him more strength over the course of each race distance as a result.
This leads us to time trials and race pace workouts. These types of workouts lend themselves to our common theme but are perhaps the most important aspect of the second portion of our examination, particularly regarding Aouita’s versatility. Aouita commonly ran time trials and while the exact frequency is unknown, it is said that they were a regularly included part of his training. These time trials were very seldom longer than 3,000 meters so as not to cause too much damage. They served a few purposes. One, it gave him confidence in his training and paces for race day and two, it gave him knowledge of his body at these paces in the less than ideal environment of a solo session. This confidence and knowledge gave him a marked advantage over athletes that were not performing these workouts as a result. Most athletes do not run time trials very often and thus many have questions of their race day paces and strategies as opposed to answers.
Finally, Aouita’s race specific workouts were likely the main contributing factor to his versatility. Simply put, he trained more variety in his race pace workouts than almost any other contemporary athlete and certainly more than most amateur runners. With the average person training for perhaps a marathon in a few months it’s common to see athletes base all of their speed work on their big goal. Workouts like 3×2 miles at marathon pace are certainly good workouts for the distance and necessary for a longer race such as that, but not training paces faster than this is leaving much on the table for many runners. Aouita knew this and operated under the assumption that; as with his top end and speed endurance sessions, training specific workouts for say an upcoming 5,000 would improve his endurance for his next 800 and by a similar line of thinking an 800 specific session would only make his next 5,000 that much easier as his strength and economy grew.
In conclusion, Aouita’s unique training systems and structures gave him significant advantages over many of the contemporary athletes of his day, as noted once again by his 115 wins out of 119 races post 1983. Particularly, his emphasis on speed, to include speed threshold/reserve in a manner that remains unique today. For an athlete looking for new ways to perform this knowledge may prove invaluable in the structuring of their next training block.
Considering the success, training, and inspiration others drew from Aouita it could certainly be stated that he was an undeservingly forgotten name of his era. There were rivalries, scandals, and he was somewhat overshadowed by more media friendly athletes of the decade. Perhaps the rapid ascension of those who directly succeeded him didn’t help either, but this does not mean we cannot learn from and appreciate his career and his training. With a range and style that is still unique today, his relevance to those who know, will remain unchanged. Whether we use this knowledge to examine our own speed training, impart his implementation of unique workout structure, or adjust mileage accordingly, there is perhaps knowledge for everyone in the study of his case. Knowledge after all is just as important to an athlete as strength. Said Aouita knew this as well as anyone and those of us who understand this will continue to look to stories like these to grow.
