Lydiard versus Whitlock

The Whitlock method would get you to 1-2 hours pretty quickly,

I found a 2003 Joe Henderson online article, at his website ("Running Commentary"), where Mr. Whitlock advised he added 4-5 minutes per run as he built up to his 2:59 at age 73 record.

Mr. Whitlock has also CAUTIONED people that this works for HIM and may not for others.

Caveat Emptor.

bump

Ed also runs three hours a day when he is about three weeks out from his target marathon and even then he is rarely able to hold that level of volume.There's a lot of myth making about Ed and his reticence only adds to it.

A Pied wrote:

Which would make more sense to the huddled masses here at LRC?

When recovering from a layoff would you:

1) Use the Lydiard method of 30-minutes/15minutes/15minutes in terms of time running when resuming training

or

2) The Whitlock protocol of starting at ten minutes run, then adding a day until you reach 45-minutes...after which you add time as you feel?

(Presumably, most here would go to an hours' run duration, then start varying runs on alternate days, versus the "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead to 2 or 3 hours"

version.)

Thanks.

NeedingStructure wrote:

Ed also runs three hours a day when he is about three weeks out from his target marathon and even then he is rarely able to hold that level of volume.

There's a lot of myth making about Ed and his reticence only adds to it.

Reticence? He posts here all the time and is very open about what he is doing and how it is going.

For older athletes, the approach is greatly dependent on your individual level of durability. What I do now as a 65 year old is very different from what I did as a 45 year old. As a 45 year old I was doing lower mileage (35-45 mpw) with a lot of high quality interval work. As a 65 year old I am doing much more lower pace steady state work (60-70mpw) with a small amount of quality. I have found that I can manage about 90 minutes per day of run training and my risk of injury starts going up drastically above that level. Some people like Ed can handle more, but many can't. As earlier posters have said, the key is remaining healthy through long stretches of uninterrupted training.

IIRC OTTOMH, Ed was regularly running 2-3 hours/day for his marathon record training, with shorter 5k/10k races thrown in for speed work. That level of training in recent years has fallen off due to injury, IIRC, OTTOMH.

Do you think today's shoes make a difference, what with all the differing permutations, versus the older models which essentially just used rubber?

Never had a shoe problem back then. When the shoes got fossilized or cracked you tossed them and got new ones.

Ahhh simplicity.