ATHLETICS:There's no harm in replicating other athletes' methods but it might be wise to steer clear of Frank Shorter's unorthodox diet before a major championship race, writes Ian O'Riordan

A CARTOON IN the current New Yorker magazine shows an anxious couple entering a fancy restaurant, with the caption: "We only eat foods that have been grown not knowing that they will eventually be eaten."

There are a lot of fussy eaters out there these days, and athletes are no exception.

Many athletes I know are obsessed not only with how they train but also with what they eat - and not necessarily in that order.

Often it seems the less serious the athletes, the more likely it is that order is reversed, and what they eat becomes more important than how they train.

Even the most accomplished athletes have been known to slavishly copy the training methods of others.

There is always the temptation, on hearing or reading about some new technique or formula, to dismiss years of experience, throw all common sense out the window and replicate what is apparently working a treat for another athlete - even if he happens to be Kenyan, born and raised in the mountains and used to running dozens of miles to and from school. Don't let this happen to you. I once decided to train like a Kenyan, which meant living at high altitude, running twice a day, and adopting a diet of rice and beans.

The only place I could afford to live that even approached high altitude was Madrid, where I got a job teaching English.

The vast Casa de Campo was ideal for training, but after a few days on the rice-and-beans diet, most of my running was in the direction of the nearest bathroom.

There is no such thing as the perfect running diet, despite what some people might tell you. The book Running With The Legends, edited by Michael Sandrock of the Colorado Daily, features lengthy interviews with 21 of the world's most famous distance runners, largely based on how they train, and also what they eat.

Some of their diets are quite frightening, and definitely not to be replicated.

Bill Rodgers, the four-time winner of both the New York and Boston marathons, who helped define the American running boom of the late 1970s, would follow his 10-mile morning run with pizza, left over from the night before, liberally topped with mayonnaise.

After some 30-mile training days, Rodgers would often wake up at four in the morning with hunger pains, head for his refrigerator, and eat tablespoon after tablespoon of mayonnaise straight from the jar.

"Do I run so much to eat like this," he would ask himself, "or do I eat like this to run so much?"

For Frank Shorter, a contemporary of Rodgers and 1972 Olympic marathon champion, the running diet was based around Schlitz beer (Milwaukee's original, now sadly lamented) and Ring-Dings (a sort of extra-sweet chocolate Kimberley).

In his book The Frank Shorter Story he again admits his fondness for beer, and how, to my enduring amazement, he got quite drunk the night before winning his Olympic gold medal in Munich.

"That night we went out and I had a litre and a half or two of beer before bed. I didn't have any trouble sleeping at all. The German beer is great, and I really don't mind getting half looped the night before a race."

Shorter then describes his breakfast the morning of the race itself: "I went to fill up on carbohydrates. Pancakes, cereal and breads, honey and syrup; that sort of thing. As much as I could stand without getting sick."

One of the most startling interviews in Running With The Legends is with Toshihiko Seko, Japan's most successful marathon runner, with victories that included Boston, London, Chicago and Tokyo.

Seko's training and diet were both extreme, as this diary entry illustrates:

6.30am: Wake-up, 10-mile morning run.

8am: Breakfast (rice), followed by morning nap.

11am: Second workout, 13-mile time trial.

1pm: Leisurely lunch of udon noodles and sushi, followed by afternoon nap.

5pm: Hardest training, 13-18 miles. Stomach upset and couldn't eat. Drank 10 beers.

9pm: Lights out.

Needless to say, it would be kamikaze to attempt to copy Seko's regime.

Among the most successful Irish athletes, training diets are also greatly varied.

Catherina McKiernan would always travel to races with a loaf of her mother's brown bread and a small bag of jumbo oats.

Even when staying in a fancy hotel, McKiernan would hand the bag of jumbo oats to the kitchen staff each morning and ask them to cook them up with water and a little milk.

In all her years of racing, and despite her several memorable wins, McKiernan hardly ever touched a drink, except maybe a sip or two of Guinness.

Nor, famously, did John Treacy.

Others were more indulging, and one of the many stories surrounding Eamonn Coghlan's great indoor career is that he would be among the last men standing in a bar the night before a race, a pint of Harp in his hand, and still get up the next day and run a sub-four-minute mile, without even breaking sweat.

Coghlan also reportedly visited an Italian restaurant the night before the World Championship 5,000 metres in Helsinki in 1983. He ordered a plate of spaghetti bolognese, wolfed it down, and then promptly ordered a second plate.

The next day, of course, he won the gold medal.

I don't know if these stories are actually true, but hopefully Coghlan will expand on them when his long overdue autobiography is finally published next month.

When it comes to training, most athletes have a hard time adopting the "less is more" approach, even when they're obviously overtraining.

It's usually the opposite when it comes to diet, and the belief that eating less will somehow allow them to train more.

Despite their frequent fondness for alcohol, none of the athletes in Running With The Legends advocate this - and that at least is good advice.

And while no one should recommend a cold beer after a training run, it does, as Hunter S Thompson would say, work well for me.