Lydiard V Kellogg

They have virtually the same ideology. Focus on training with the purpose of racing and not just creating a pretty six-month training log.

John Kellogg, as his training is more well rounded.

JK is pretty much a more refined version of Lydiard, and you bet that JK owes a lot of his principles to Lydiard's original trial and error.

JK's training isn't an outline that tells you what to do every single day because there is no "right" answer that fits every runner. You really wouldn't get that unless he was coaching you directly and knew your strengths/weaknesses (as would be the case with any good coach). His writings here are mostly just explaining what the ingredients to success are, while the precise mix of those ingredients is found via trial and error and discovering what works with each athlete.

Kellogg who? The breakfast cereal?

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

Kellogg who? The breakfast cereal?

The person who coached one of the wejo to a 28:06 10000m time.

Lydiard Disciple wrote:

Dear All,

Looking for posters thoughts on Lydiard training versus John Kellogg. I did a Lydiard training programme from the running wizard site last year, enjoyed it but didn’t make any progress using the plan, on this forum John Kellogg is regularly mentioned as a good training regime, I have download the PDF containing all of John’s emails form lets run etc, but too be honest I get a little lost in the terminology, can anyone recommend a good plan to follow, what I liked about Lydiard programme was it was all outlined for 6 months, generally I run for approx. 1 hour every day, with Lydiard I increased this to 90 minutes twice a week and added the long run, I respond very well to tempo runs, I tried Lydiard after doing HADD for a year and made super progress. Appreciate your thoughts.

Hehe! First at a quick glance of your thread I thought you had been following my coaching principles when you write "the running wizard". But with a closer reading I fast come to know it wasn`t .

First a question, …. Why do you like a plan with all outlined for 6 months? I mean, so many things can occur during the journey of training threw the months that needs changes in the program. And when you then can`t follow the outlined 6 month plan it will often affect your psychological expectations negatively. My experience is that it`s much better to take one week at a time, but of course have the basic program and the goals kept in mind overall.

- The real wizard -

As much as I like the Lydiard Foundation and as much as I wish them well with selling their programs, I agree with you about programs that extend for long periods of time. There's no problem, maybe even some value, in seeing an overall plan. But most plans, whether they're printed in a book or generated by a computer, require fairly constant monitoring and adjustment. The plan needs to be adjusted to suit the runner but when you have a plan that goes for six months with every day's run prescribed you've got a situation where the runner is adjusting to the plan.

No one can know for sure how well or poorly that runner will adapt as the plan unfolds. Maybe the plan is perfect. I know that the Foundation gets feedback from people for whom the plans worked wonderfully. But any long term plan may be too ambitious for some people as it goes along and not challenging enough for others. It may be possible to make adjustments yourself with such plans, but if not you really should have a real live coach.

Not to criticize the OP, but liking a plan because it outlines everything you need to do for the next half year essentially says that you don't want to think about your training. You want to know that it's Thursday and so you do mile reps at a particular pace barring illness, injury, or attack by space aliens. And that's not good. Sticking to a plan is not the same as following it blindly.

Does Kellogg know his stuff? Sure. But if all the OP does is find some sort of schedule from Kellogg and ape it he may end up in the same boat he's in now. The trick with a plan is to understand what it's trying to do and adapt it to your own circumstances rather than to follow it blindly.

A good one HRE. Especially that about attack by space aliens,hehe!. I just love that kind of humor. We really must meet over a glass of beer and / or drinks for an interesting discus. Looking forward to that someday.

SUPERIOR COACH JS wrote:

A good one HRE. Especially that about attack by space aliens,hehe!. I just love that kind of humor. We really must meet over a glass of beer and / or drinks for an interesting discus. Looking forward to that someday.

Same here. I'll be in Ireland at the end of next month, barring an attack by space aliens. It's not Sweden but it's a lot closer to it than I am now.

SUPERIOR COACH JS wrote:

We really must meet over a glass of beer and / or drinks for an interesting discus.

Throwing the discus is always interesting, especially if you have been drinking.

HRE wrote:

SUPERIOR COACH JS wrote:

A good one HRE. Especially that about attack by space aliens,hehe!. I just love that kind of humor. We really must meet over a glass of beer and / or drinks for an interesting discus. Looking forward to that someday.

Same here. I'll be in Ireland at the end of next month, barring an attack by space aliens. It's not Sweden but it's a lot closer to it than I am now.

I have never been in Ireland . I have only coached an Irish master runner in two months from 16:30 down to 15:37 at 5 k . So maybe "kill two birds with one stone" and meet you both. And if the space aliens will come we will fight them hard together.

Hi Guys OP here,

@super coach JS & @ HRE - I know I am contradicting what I initially posted, but I agree completely a lot of life events can occur during an extended training period, and my psychological expectations were affected negatively, especially when my training/performance went off a cliff.

Thank you to the poster @Lydiard Cerutty who posted all of John’s discussion on this site, I am what is termed a hobby jogger, no discernible talent but enjoy the challenge of trying to run faster, so a lot of terminology gets a little lost on me e.g. tempo runs etc, how to structure a training programme and how hard or easy I should be running, the different type of workouts etc. to be fair that was beneficial with the running wizard training programme, maybe John might write a book some time for the masses.

HRE – enjoy the trip to Ireland, we are in the middle of a heat wave here, 25 degrees, sunny and warm, great running weather, if you haven’t visited us before I recommend a run in the Phoenix Park in Dublin, largest urban park in Europe and full of runners, incidentally Ireland is experiencing a running boom at present which is fantastic, back when I started jogging many years ago my friends thought it strange, now we have thousands entering running mass running races, which is fantastic.

Read everything that these, and other, distinguished coaches have to say on the business of running. Then sit down and think, seriously think, about your running - aims, strengths, weaknesses etc. - and apply what you think will benefit you.

You have to really think about things if you don't have a coach you can talk to.

Remember, no great coach would say that what they have set down in black and white in a book is directly applicable to your running. If this could be done there would be no need for any actual human coaches - we could all get our schedules from a book or on line!

A good training plan will have you getting fitter and faster from the beginning. The idea of going for 6 months and then finding out nothing changed is ludicrous. Couldn't you tell it wasn't working?

I had a short stint where Kellogg coached me online. This is generally how he outlined my training.

All runs and warm-ups start at 9 to 10 min pace or slower for first 1 to 2 miles before slowly progressing pace to a steady but easy effort.

Typically 2 days between workouts. Sometimes 3 if needed.

Roughly 4 to 6 strides day before workout and immediately before workout. Strides are roughly 15 secs long and run in progressive fashion where last 2 to 3 secs is close to top end speed.

15 to 20 min warm-ups then progressive strides before workout.

During our time together most of my workouts where what I would call tempoish efforts.

Typically 25 min tempo sometimes longer or progressive run probably start at marathon pace and get to estimated 15k pace before cranking it last 2 to 3 mins.

Other type of tempo he called crest load which was typically 8 to 12 min long with a couple min recovery before doing it again. I would estimate pace was around 10k pace. Possibly a little slower. Possibly a little faster towards the end.

Occasionally we would end tempos w 1 fast 400m or something of that nature.

In general most workouts I would guess where 10k pace or slower and if we did faster intervals it was minimal.

I'm not sure if he just used this strategy with me or if this is typical for his athletes.

To give context I was probably more developed anaerobically and highly undeveloped aerobically being a very low mileage guy in high school and college who rarely did tempos and almost all workouts where done at 800m to 3k pace.

I really enjoyed having John as a coach. He really seemed to believe in a more relaxed approach and was very knowledgeable about training.

Unfortunately I was unable to capitalize during our time together because I was probably burned out from a couple years w little to no breaks from training coupled with health/life issues that was making it hard to stay consistent in training.

I decided to take a extended break and focus on health/life issues. At the moment I am unsure whether I'll give it another go at trying to run relatively fast or not.

For a better idea of Kelloggs training check out Ben Rainero's log at

https://biggerlog.com/users/brainero

So you're in Ireland? Neat. I hope the heat wave passes soon. I've found that heat waves in the British Isles can be brutal because no one is really set up to deal with them, i.e., not many fans or AC units. We'll be there from the 21st-28th and are looking to stay near Phoenix Park during the Dublin time. It will be our second trip. The last time we went west, the ancestors came from that way. I began the process of destroying my knee in a five mile race in Galway.

As I said, looking at an extended program is good because it gives you a sense of what you'll be doing but it needs tinkering along the way. I know that if it didn't seem like it was working and you'd e-mailed Nobby or Lorraine about it they'd have worked with you to make adjustments.

I agree with HRE and Jan here.

But . . .

For each training cycle, I prepare a spreadsheet that lays out a specific run for every single day of the training cycle. I can tell you what I will be doing, in an ideal scenario on any given day in that (normally) 18 week period.

But that ideal scenario NEVER plays out, and that spreadsheet becomes a road map and set of directions. It ultimately tells me where I need to go and what direction I need to go in, but just like with any trip, you run into traffic, closed roads and other detours, side trips for bathroom stops, meals and to see the world's biggest ball of yarn. You need to be flexible enough such that you can go see that huge ball of yarn, and be confident enough in your understanding of the map and directions that you have been given (or prepared for yourself) so that you can be sure that you are still moving toward your ultimate destination while doing it.

I fully recognize that I stretched that analogy a bit thin there.

Actually, I think that was a really good analogy. I was thinking of using a road trip analogy myself but couldn't settle on the details.