Lydiard quiestion relating efford

wtf is efford

What the f*** is wtf? Cant you use youre emagination? I can, lol. But ok, i spell like shit, but this is because i am not from an english spoken country. You write what i said in my dutch and then you have the right to say something, else give me an answer wiche i can use or stfu ;-)

Arthur put those tables in at the publishers insistence. They've probably caused more problems than they've solved.

He paid no attention to heart rate and never used those tables when he was advising me. You'd be best just thinking of 1/4 effort as easy. 1/2 as moderate, 3/4 as slightly fast.

You would not run a long time trial regularly. In the latter stages of marathon prep you'd do one or two and in that case you might do the 2:18 if you had a best of 2:12. But not every week. If you're at a stage where you're doing time trials regularly they'd be at the shorter end. Six miles/ten km is about as long as you'd go.

The best practical example I can think of came from 1973-74 when he was training Richard Tayler for the 10,000 meters at the 1974 Commonwealth Games. He had Tayler do a time trial of 5,000 meters in 13:42. Tayler ran 27:46 in the CG 10,000 so he ran 11 seconds faster for the time trial than race pace.

You asked about "tempo runs" that Halberg, Magee, etc. did. The concept of tempo runs didn't really exist then but they did have up tempo runs. These were different than time trials and were usually part of the base phase. In the latter stages of the base phase it wasn't uncommon to find them doing ten miles in 54-56, fifteen miles at six minute pace or better and so on. Barry told me he'd often run "out" for thirty minutes and "back" in 25-27. But remember that these were world class runners capable of sub 2:20 marathons and sub 4:00 miles.

Thanks HRE.

I am at the 3rd week of base phase now, i am not up to 100 miles yet and but ill get there seeing how well my body is adepting to the training. As he explains i run by time, not distance, but as my level improves ill get closer to the 100 mile weeks. But ok, this is not a goal by itself. I am yust tired of making consesions in training and want to follow the shedule more precise and see where it gets me. You say to see 1/4 effort as easy. 1/2 as moderate, 3/4 as slightly fast.

I like to use heart rate monitors because it is a nice guide to follow my fitness and keeps me from going to fast, wiche i always do when i dont pay atention. Last 3 weeks i used to run the easy runs in zone 2, moderate in zone 3, and slightly fast in zone 4 wiche is yust about marathon pace. Leaving me Zone 5 for the shorter time trials when its the right time for them, and zone 1 for jogging/recovery runs.

He also mentions to keep doing some speed work if thats a weak spot and it is for me, verry slow, like 200m in 29 seconds is a race for me. When do i fit this in into the shedule. Is it better to do it after the shorter easy runs? Or as part of the warm up for the days with moderate effort(marathon pace for me)? I know its an idea to keep away from this till hill or later phases but i feel i get a lot slower from all those long distance training and want to keep the speed i worked so hard for during last year.

Flying Dutchman. wrote:

What the f*** is wtf? Cant you use youre emagination? I can, lol. But ok, i spell like shit, but this is because i am not from an english spoken country. You write what i said in my dutch and then you have the right to say something, else give me an answer wiche i can use or stfu ;-)

If I use my emagination will it help me get more girls?

HRE

What effort should you run most of your mileage at?? Moderate??

Yes Dave:)

Id say 1/4 or easy effort. Easy aerobic training is the back bone of almost all distance events. Yust when youre time is limited id do more intence workouts cause you have enough time to recover. But ok, i am curiouse also what HRE thinks about this.

As you may know, Arthur did not consider interval training to be "speed" work. He was referring to short work which maintained or increased leg speed. The classic thing to do was "fast, relaxed, strides" of 100 meters or so with FULL recovery. The other thing he mentioned was doing light hill work possibly as part of your second run. This might be something along the lines of 15-20 minutes spent running up and down a hill fairly easily as opposed to the formal and more demanding hillwork done in the actual hill phase. This would be done during the base phase and the imprtant thing from his perspective is to avoid going into oxygen debt while you do it.

Niether Arthur nor Barry have EVER advised me to do any particular pace or effort level while doing basework. Arthur's classic advice was, "Enjoy yourself." Thet never really satisfies very many people but I think it's the best answer.

For those wanting something a little more specific I'll recount two things I picked up in conversations from Snell and Magee.

Peter told me that during the early part of the base phase the weekend long runs were usually done at about a seven minute pace but as the phase went on and fitness improved it would drop to something close to six minute pace. On shorter runs, the 10-12 milers, he said they'd go "a bit" faster. It would have been on those shorter runs in the later stages of the base phase that you'd have seen those 54-55 minute 10 mile runs. But again, you need to rememeber what those guys were capable of doing when they ran at full effort. For guys like Baillie, Puckett, and Magee those ten milers were slower than their marathon pace.

The key, Peter said, was to be able to follow the schedule day in and out. If you ran too hard, he said, you'd struggle over the next couple of days, perhaps needing to run ungodly slowly to complete the distance or perhaps needing to shorten significantly or even skip a run or two. If you're having that problem you're likely running too hard.

Some years ago when I was running marathons in the 3:00-3:06 range, I'd have been in my late 40s then, Barry made an off hand reference to having me do "quality" two hour runs in which I might cover 21 km. That's about two minutes per mile slower than I could run for a marathon and he called it a "quality" two hours. So yes that was probably somewhere along the lines of 1/4th effort.

Arthur never liked the idea of long slow distance and wanted you to run as fast as you could without getting out of breath. But he also knew that people tended to overestimate how fast they could run without getting breathless so he also said things like, "You can never run too slowly. But you can run too fast." But you wouldn't avoid running fast if you can do so aerobically and you wouldn't force yourself to run faster than you can manage while staying aerobic.

HRE -- thanks alot for the info, that was an excellent read.

I have to especially agree with the point about running as fast as you can WITHOUT getting out of breath. I still think that one classic mistake is running long runs too slow (there's no need to be running 9 minute mile pace), and that in order for aerobic adaptations to happen you have to be working somewhat hard every workout.

HRE:

I really appreciate you explaining all this. This is very helpful information for understanding Lydiard. I'm a middle-aged recreational runner trying to improve my times and I lurk on these boards trying to pick up good info from some of the solid posters (whom I've come to recognize). Again, I really appreciate your explanations.

I have to say, HRE is a beast.

Thanks guys! I really appreciate the comments.

Today did my first double since a long time:)

In the morning i went out with some local running friends for a verry slow 14k, then late afternoon did a ''hill'' session. Its an old trash hill and it has a nice long stair to the top wiche is about 50 metres long.

I think i should keep this one in for some power and leg speed since its not to long to become anaerobic but long enough to get the heart rate up. Its so flat in my aria that i am limited to this hill, it has another side also wiche ill use in the hill phase. Its less steep but longer so perfect for bounding up. After this ''hill'' i did 10 times 100m fast and relaxed. I could notice i didnt do fast work for a while, but ok, thats why i train it.

Thanks HRE for youre insight of the Lydiard system. There are so many training shedules but his always seems to work for me. And believe me, i have tried a lot of them.

Somehow i always come in my best shape when it matters most when i do lydiard system. I did low km aerobic interval training for a while in wiche i did intervals every day at aerobic effort, between 200 and 2000m and manny races. But somehow i could never know when i was in my best shape. And so it happened i ran personal records when it didnt count, and flopped when it did, lol.

Now back training for a marathon trying to get to my dream of running within 2:30. Lets hope the lydiard system and my determination will get me there:)

I looked at this question for sometime, trying to make some sense or some generalizations from the tables in the books.

First, HRE is right in that the best answer seems to be to find some simple corresponding adjectives, like "steady", "hard", and "harder", and you need to just develop the experience to get it right.

You won't find any clean mapping of these efforts to specific paces or certain HR zones. In part, because the efforts are specific to the race distances. For example, 1/4th effort for a mile may end up in the same HR zone, or a similiar pace, as a 1/2 effort for 3 miles, and 3/4th effort for 6 miles.

I kinda think of it like this:

Full effort is what you can do in an all-out race.

Half effort is what you can do when you are only half trying.

Zero effort is your easy pace.

1/4th and 3/4th efforts fit in-between.

But my thinking about Lydiard efforts is purely theoretical (I found even 1/4th efforts in the pace tables seemed a little on the fast side for training. Either I train too slow, or race too fast -- but I'm also far from world class). For practical pace or effort guidance, Daniel's VDOT tables, or McMillan's calculator, or heart-rate zone training, gives more specific guidance, particularly for inexperienced or insecure runners.

I also tried to look at it some other ways, looking for a simple rule. I thought this idea was interesting, but I made no effort to confirm it against the tables:

Is 1/2 effort for a 15K about 30K race pace, and 1/4 effort for 10K about marathon pace?

It may make for an interesting mathematical exercise for someone one day, but I never bothered for, as others had said before, Arthur and his followers didn't use the effort tables anyway, and some usable alternatives already existed.

RE: the previous post. if you do some simple math, you can see that 1/4 effort for 10k is nowhere near MP. I don't think they vary too much from distance to distance. Remember, lydiards guys trained together, so it's not like Halburg and Snell are going to be training at vastly difference paces because 5k is 6x longer than 800m.

Another thing to consider is that they sometimes trained with ARTHUR, especially on the Sunday long run. So you're talking about a bunch of guys who could run marathons in 2:20 or better doing their long run with a guy in his early to mid forties whose best time was 2:38 and run a decade or so earlier.

Lydiard adapted the Effort Tables of Gosta Holmer. *Holmer developed the table before WWII. It goes like this:

For any given distance,

Full effort = 100% speed

7/8th effort = 97.5% speed

3/4th effort = 95% speed

1/2 effort = 92.5% speed

1/4th effort = 90% speed

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Example:

A 4:00 miler wanting to run 440 repeats:

Effort Speed Per 440 yds

Full 100% 60 sec.

7/8 97.5% 61.5 sec.

3/4 95% 63 sec.

1/2 92.5% 66 sec.

1/4 90% 69 sec.

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Remember, the co-author of Lydiard's books was Garth Gilmour, who knew Holmer's methods well.